A/N: This is my new project! As often happens to me I have had a serious struggle with the title and it may change in the future. All of Victoire's relatives here, besides those who were introduced in the Epilogue, come from JKR's Weasley family tree which was originally revealed on a documentary in 2008, and can easily be found on HP Wiki. Everything is canon to the best of my knowledge, so Ted, as confirmed by JKR, is not a werewolf. Ted's friend Rupert, the only OC here, first appeared in All I Want for Christmas, and if anyone's wondering where Fleur's accent has gone, it has improved a bit with 30 years in England. I hope you enjoy! Thanks very much to my lovely betareader, ladyofthelight101.

Blood on the Moon

Mooning Over You

Victoire Weasley looked in her full-length bedroom mirror and gave her reflection a goodbye smile. After twenty-six years of being a Weasley she was about to achieve a dream she had had for twenty of them; to be become Mrs Victoire Lupin. After months of preparation everything was ready-the hotel was booked, the flowers were arranged, she had even perfected her new signature. Her carriage would be coming in half an hour and there was little left to be done.

She turned around to her mother; 'I think I'm ready,'

Maman sighed with relief and pleasure. It had been an extremely long day. 'So do I,'.

She took a step back and revealed Victoire to the group of girls waiting on the bed. ''Ow does she look, ladies?'

All of them gasped and made excited comments, even her cousin Roxanne, who was the most reluctant of all of them to spend a night in girly fantasy.

'Camera!' someone shouted, and Victoire saw lights flashing before her eyes before she could smile, but the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look would only be one of many silly photos taken to speed up the long process of getting ready.

There was a knock at the door, and the grandmother-of-the-bride entered, looking elegant in purple dress robes and a wide-brimmed pointy hat. She immediately rushed over to Victoire and kissed her on both cheeks before glancing at her professionally made-up face.

'Oh, my little Vicky!' she gushed. 'Isn't she beautiful?'

'She is an angel,' Maman agreed, her eyes shining.

Victoire gave her bridesmaids a weary look. 'What are they going to be like at the wedding, if they're like this now?'

'You know Maman's got blue hankies in her bag, to match her outfit.' Dominique, her younger sister, said.

'Oooh!' Her cousin Lily exclaimed, 'Do you have something old and new and borrowed and blue, Victoire?'

Victoire nodded, showed these things off with glamorous little flicks of her hands.

'I've got this tiara, which is old and borrowed, this dress, which is brand new, and blue...'

She put her hands around her ears, which had turquoise studs in them; Ted's favourite colour. Her thoughts quickly turned to him.

'I've seen his dress robes, even though he hasn't seen mine.' she said. The change in subject seemed random but by now everyone was rather used to it. The extent of Victoire's love for Ted was occasionally quite alarming. 'He looks like a real gentleman-but sexy too.'

Nanny said, 'Doesn't it seem like no time at all since he was running round the garden in dungarees?'

'Don't...' Maman replied, clearly trying to reign in her emotions before the ceremony.

'We've got the honeymoon suite at the hotel for tonight.' Victoire continued. 'The bedlinen is made of silk, and there's a balcony with a view of the beach. Plus it has a pool, I didn't want to be in a hotel which didn't have one. Oh, and they put chocolates on your pillows,'

'Trust Teddy to choose one that had that.' Rose said, chuckling.

'It's so exciting!' Lucy cried. She and her twin sister Molly, both eight, were the youngest bridesmaids and had been at the house since early in the morning. Even though it was now almost seven they were still full of beans. 'I wish I was getting married!'

Molly glanced at her flower-shaped watch; 'Twenty minutes to go!' she shouted, which was followed by more squealing. Victoire decided she would squeal inwardly and turned back to the mirror.

She and her mother had worked hard to achieve the perfect look for her wedding. Her hair, which was Weasley red rather Veela blond, was in a plaited bun with small fabric flowers on hairpins poked into it. She wore a veil which did not cover her face (the only choice Ted had had over the ensemble) and a tiara belonging to her late Great-Great Aunt Muriel. Her dress had a wide skirt with a long train, inspired by the one worn by her aunt Ginny many years before. It had been specially fitted by the best tailors in London. As it was a winter wedding, she also would be wearing long gloves and a red cloak edged with faux white fur, which was matched, obviously, by red bridesmaids' dresses. Delacours had a taste for luxury; Mamie, her French grandmother, had insisted on going to all the best shops in London for her first grandchild's big day. It was enough to make a poor Weasley cringe, not to mention a poor Lupin, who had to be specially persuaded to buy a new suit.

'You know, my parents had their wedding reception in the Burrow's back garden. And your parents got married in that same back garden. So really it'd be fitting if...'

'No, I want somewhere with a floor!'

He had, at least, convinced her that it was a bit unfair for their families to pay for everything. They had contributed their own savings from three years of engagement; though the Weasleys, being Weasleys, knew those savings had another important cause to pay for. One of the things Ted had been willing to tell her about his stag night ('Because trust me, you don't want to know everything') was that his friends had already began placing wagers on how long it would be until he and her heard the patter of tiny feet for the first time.

But if their recent visit to the formidably-named Family Planning Zone had been anything to go by...

She snapped out of her drifting thoughts with a cry from Lucy of 'Fifteen minutes!', but this had not stopped her mother from looking concerned at her daughter's suddenly looking serious.

'Are you feeling nervous?' she whispered in her ear, when the excited troupe of girls, who were now having last-minute make-up checks, weren't looking.

Victoire shook her head. 'No, I was just thinking about...something else. I know I want to marry Ted. I always have, there isn't anything in the world I want more.'

She said this with such a beautiful smile that Fleur drew her hands to her mouth in emotion. It was enough to make her daughter laugh.

'Maman! Honestly!'

'Oh, when you 'ave a little girl, you'll understand.'

Victoire averted her eyes and nodded. 'I'm sure I will.'

There was another knock at the door, and Victoire's father, brother and grandfather entered, all looking very happy and rather dashing in their dress robes.

'Is everyone finally ready?' Louis asked. 'Mascara unsmudged? Nail polish unchipped?'

The bride and all her bridesmaids immediately looked at their nails when he said this.

Dad, meanwhile, had turned to look at Victoire. His scarred face lit up with a huge fatherly smile. Granddad also looked impressed.

'Blimey,' Dad said.

'She reminds me of our Ginny.' Granddad commented aside to Nanny. 'Like she walked out of a fairy tale,'

Victoire posed romantically. 'Do I look like a beautiful bride, Dad?'

Her father's smile became even wider; 'I think I'm going to find it difficult to give you away.'

'You're not losing a daughter, you're gaining a son,' Dominique said cheerfully.

'I always wanted a brother,' Louis added, half-jokingly, half-sentimentally. Louis was considerably younger than his sisters and Ted had always been a friend to him - Victoire had many painful memories of the first times Ted had come to dinner when they went out, and it was all 'Teddy, can you do elephant ears? Can you morph fish fins like a merman? Can you look like a girl?' Fortunately, all these reminders were not so much embarrassing any more as proof of how right it was for her to be with Ted.

'Ten minutes!' Lucy shouted, and this time, Victoire squealed out loud. Ten minutes, six hundred seconds, and here would come the bride...

Then suddenly, there was another knock at the door, except this time, it was the front door.

'Who could that be?'

'Oh my God! The carriage is early!' one of the bridesmaids said, and everyone began to fuss.

'Oh, Merlin, we said seven! No one's been to the loo yet!' Nanny protested, as Dad dashed downstairs to answer the door.

Victoire listened for the voice of her carriage driver, and was very surprised when she heard a familiar voice.

'Hello, erm, I assume no one's left yet?'

This was Rupert, Ted's best friend since his first day at Hogwarts and Best Man at the wedding. He was intelligent and friendly and Victoire loved his company, but she wasn't sure she wanted him at her house right now. Her muscles tensed. Was something wrong?

'No,' was Dad's reply. 'Everyone's upstairs. The carriage is due in ten minutes. Is there a problem?'

There was silence in the room as everyone strained to hear Rupert's voice. He was stammering very badly, which was certainly not a good sign.

'Yes. T-t-ted seems to have gone missing.'

Some people in the room reacted, but were immediately hushed by everyone else.

'What do you mean, missing?'

'I-I was supposed to join him at his house this morning, and when I got th-there he wasn't answering the door. I waited about half an hour, and then decided to go for it and Apparate in. He wasn't t-there. I went t-to Andromeda's, and to Harry Potter's, and he wasn't in either of those places. I went to Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Kings Cross, The Leaky Cauldron; I even t-turned up at Kingsley Shacklebolt's place, which is a bugger to even get near. I was going back and forth all afternoon, th-though of course I kept ch-checking the house. I couldn't find him anywhere. I sent my owl this morning, but he hasn't come back yet. So...I...don't know quite what we're going to do here.'

Someone in the room said 'Oh my God' under their breath. Victoire took her mother's hand. She tried to steady her mind and hope that Ted was merely planning an elaborate surprise, but surely Rupert, Andromeda or Harry would've known about it? And even if they did this was a rather cruel way of arranging it.

'It's OK,' Mamn told her quietly. 'It's going to be alright.'

'Well,' Dad said, after a while. 'We ought to go to the hotel anyway. Perhaps Ted will surprise us all.'

'Yes,' Rupert agreed, though he seemed very hesitant. 'After all...the guests will be arriving about now, we can't be late.'

'Exactly, exactly.' There was another pause. 'So, five minutes.'

This time, no one squealed.

The eventual journey into the carriage was so silent and morose the driver felt forced to make wisecracks just so it didn't feel like a funeral. Communication came mostly through looks and expressions. Rupert had made one comment on how beautiful Victoire looked, and she had thanked him and asked him if he had his speech ready, but the conversation ended there. Molly and Lucy had huddled together while the older bridesmaids exchanged knowing glances which seemed to say 'affair' and 'cold feet' in Victoire's increasingly paranoid mind, much as she tried to deny what was happening. She breathed in the scent of her flowers and tried to think of how silly she'd feel later at the reception, when she would do her first wifely nagging on a husband still too fond of pranks...

There was no reception. There couldn't be one, not if no one got married. After three hours with awkward silence and no groom the ceremony, in accordance with hotel regulations, had to be cancelled. Many of the guests left with only sympathetic remarks and sheepish deposit of presents to the bride, who by this time was finding it very difficult not to cry. Her dream was becoming a nightmare and as ten o'clock approached it seemed nothing and no one was going to save what had been her perfect wedding day. She didn't want to think about what had possessed Ted to do this to her.

The wedding party and their closest friends and family congregated at the Burrow for drinks and general solidarity in the wake of a disaster. No one was speaking much; Molly and Lucy had been taken home by their parents in floods of tears. All of Victoire and Ted's presents were ranged unopened on the dining room table. There had been a palaver over cancelling the catering and the DJ, but luckily no one felt like dancing and a round of sandwiches from Nanny seemed to be satisfactory all round.

Harry Potter, the nearest thing Ted really had to a father, was particularly upset by the whole affair. He and Rupert were convinced that something terrible must have happened to Ted, as he could not and would not have abandoned Victoire without very good reason.

'Did you check the hospitals, and the Department of Law Enforcement?' he asked Rupert slowly. He was afraid of hurting Victoire, who still hadn't cried yet.

'Yes,' Rupert admitted. 'No response. I can't think...;

'Something has to have happened.' Andromeda said. 'Teddy wouldn't just...I mean, he wouldn't. Don't you agree, Harry?'

Harry nodded sincerely, though he, like Andromeda, couldn't help thinking of similar behaviour from a certain related newlywed many years before. Other people also looked around, silently asking each other the same question.

Victoire also didn't want to believe he had chosen to do this. Ted Lupin was the love of her life and she was the love of his. He was devoted to her in every way. There were the big things, like taking her to Paris and asking her to marry him, and there were the little things, like her name being carved in the wall of his shower (not many people knew about that). He had dedicated writing to her. Even before they had fallen in love she had been one of his best friends; she was the only one, for example, who could understand the tension he felt every full moon.
They lived and breathed each other; being 'bonded for life' was the only thing above what they had. But apparently he didn't want it all. She tried to remove these thoughts from her mind and for a long time would not let anyone talk to her, as if she still expected Ted to stroll in and lead her down the nearest aisle. She would not even take off her cloak.

After another hour, in which everyone munched more sandwiches and made sparing conversation ("So will you be getting a refund?" "No, the hotel will not give it..."), Dad was the first to snap.

'....I can't bloody believe this,' he said. 'How the hell could he do that to my daughter?'

'Bill, please.' Maman said seriously, knowing what a fragile state Victoire was in.

'Second I get hold of him I'll wring his scrawny neck!'

'DAD!' Dominique and Louis shouted simultaneously.

Dad was too angry to stop. 'I don't like seeing my little girl get hurt. I think you can both understand that.'

'Mr Weasley,' Andromeda began firmly. 'I know my grandson better than anyone in this room and I assure you he loves your daughter. There is no way that he chose to do this.'

'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you? I think we all remember what happened with Remus and...'

'That has absolutely nothing to do with...'

She broke off as Victoire suddenly let out a soft moan, finally beginning to shatter. Her face crumpled and Dominique, Rose and Lily all reached to hold her. Upon seeing this, Maman leapt to her feet and glared lividly at her husband.

'I will 'ave none of this, Bill!'

'Fleur...' he started, though he suddenly seemed a lot more cowed under the Veela glare. Everyone in the room was silently watching them. 'There's no point in ignoring the bleeding obvious...'

'I don't care about what's obvious or not, look at Victoire! Get out until you 'ave calmed down.'

He glared at her. 'We can't just...'

'OUT!' Maman shouted, trembling a little.

Seeing she was as upset as he was if not showing it in the same way, Dad slowly rose from his chair and left the room. No one said anything for a moment as footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs.

'I'm sorry,' Maman told everyone demurely. 'It is a full moon, you know...it affects 'is emotions.'

Suddenly, Rupert's eyes widened. He slammed down his glass of mead and rushed to the window as if checking the moon was really there. He turned to everyone, his face glowing, and without the slightest hesitation he said;

'I think I know where Ted is.'