Circo Plenilunio

Chapter 1: The Sketchbook

Hugo Weasley lay on his stomach, amidst a mess of pots of coloured ink, quills of different sizes and crumpled up pieces of parchment. Unable to think of anything to draw, he stood up and wiped his forehand across his brow, unaware that he was smearing a large amount of indigo ink across it. He climbed down the ladder that led to his attic bedroom and bounded down the additional two flights of stairs that led to the kitchen.

Hugo lived in a tall and narrow house just off the edge of a wood near Exmoor. And he had been in an artistic rut for a few weeks. He was losing interest in everything he tried to paint and growing impatient with his loss of imagination.

"If you want you could Floo to Charlie for a few days, he wouldn't mind, would he? You could draw some dragons," his father had suggested through a mouthful of pork sausage.

"Ron, he's only 16. He's not going to Romania by himself." his mother had retaliated, and they all knew that his mother's word was final.

"Rosie got to go," Hugo interjected, more out of observation than bitterness.

"Yeah well Rose is 18 and doesn't have a purple ink smudge across her forehead." his father said, grinning.

Rose had left Hogwarts a few months ago and was living in a flat in Diagon Alley along with her friends Ivy, Albus and Scorpius Malfoy (much to her father's horror). She was working as a barmaid in the Leaky Cauldron while studying Arithmancy. Their parents had been wary of granting her this freedom but after a thousand choruses of "Honestly Mum, you obliviated your parents to go hunt horcruxes with two strange boys when you were around my age", they let her go, not really having a leg to stand on.

Hugo took his mud brown moleskin notebook and headed towards the wood. He scaled up a tree a few steps into the wood, his hands familiar with the branches, having drawn this tree many times before. He balanced himself on a particularly sturdy branch and opened his book.

When he opened this book, all the pages appeared blank. Hugo leaned into the pages and softly hummed four ascending notes, and the book began to expand. It changed from being a handheld notebook to a full size sketch book, adorned with the Hufflepuff emblem. He gently opened the book and poured over his early drawings.

His favourite drawings were the ones of Hogwarts. He looked through sketches of his friends: he saw a sketch of Lysander Scamander in the Common Room, asleep with a Herbology book on his face; he saw a sketch of Isabella Baker standing knee deep in the Black Lake wearing her uniform, before it swiftly changed frame and pictured her tripping over and landing in the lake with a splash; he saw a sketch of Henry Garnet with his blue and silver tie around his head, grinning manically at a Ravenclaw vs Gryffindor Quidditch match. He felt the rough edges of a piece of parchment that had been ripped out when he had drawn Lily and Lysander together on a Hogsmeade outing to give to them. And the book was filled with holiday snaps of young Rose and Hugo in huge knitted jumpers standing in front of the Christmas tree at the burrow. There was photographs of James attempting to jump into the photo but knocking down the tree in the process. There was pictures of the summer they spent at Shell Cottage, pictures of the cousins swimming in the sea, pictures of the cousins on the tire swing in the front garden of the Burrow (courtesy of Mr Weasley). Hugo hummed the same four notes into the book in a descending scale and the book shrunk back to its ordinary size. He hung his legs over the branch, steadied himself, and swung back so that his arms were swinging, almost brushing the ground.

Then something caught his eye.

His eyes darted back to the spot they had just vacated. There was nothing there. But he had seen a figure of deep blue. He was sure of it. He looked out into the wood, examining every tree as he had done a thousand times before. Then the feeling left, the woods felt safe again.

Then he heard a yell from his house.

"HUGO...C'MERE...QUICK!!"

He was so startled, he fell out of the tree. He ran towards his house, wand at the ready. But when he reached the kitchen...

"LOOK HUGO!!" It was Rose, her face lightly dusted with the ash of Floo Powder. Scorpius stood behind her, looking uncomfortable. Rose was waving around 5 small pieces of matte black parchment. Each of them were decorated with a large Crescent moon ominously glowing on the back and gorgeously embossed golden letters spelling "Circo Plenilunio" on the front. They were tickets. Ron's mouth fell open.

"How the bloody hell did you manage to get your hands on these?" he whispered in awe, eyeing the tickets with the greatest reverence.

"Wait hang on, what are they?" Hugo asked impatiently.

"They're tickets for the Circo Plenilunio. It's the only Wizarding Circus in Britain." Hermione explained, "But it's really difficult to get tickets, isn't it? We've tried before. There's usually an advert in the Daily Prophet and you have to apply to enter the draw. And Wizards from all around the world apply for them, the Circus is said to be one of the best in Wizarding history."

"And we got them!" Rose almost yelled, positively beaming.

"When is it?" Ron enthused.

"We're not sure. Scorpius says the moon on the parchment is in sync with the real lunar cycle. So it'll be the night that the moon on the parchment is full. Which will probably be a few weeks." Rose added excitedly. The atmosphere chilled considerably at the mention of Scorpius' name.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Hugo obsessed over the idea of this circus. He bombarded his mother with relentless questions about it in a childlike enthusiasm almost every day.

"I got an owl from Lysander, Mum. He says the circus conceals itself until opening night. Is that true? Could it be here right now?"

"Mum, how will we know where it is?"

"Mum, is Scorpius coming with us?"

Eventually Hermione started to brush off Hugo's questions, with the answer that they would find out soon enough.

Until one day, Hugo woke up, and the moon on the smooth black ticket had become full.

And below it, the words "Midnight. Exmoor Quidditch Stadium." glimmered magically in a semi-legible gold calligraphy. And Hugo could barely contain himself.