Author's Note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment #8, Criminology Task #4 Write about someone who doesn't notice or realize something important.

Beta: Aya! Thank you kindly :D

Warnings: NA

This week's AU: Soul Mark!AU (1)

Through The Blur

Remus was happy for James. Really, he was.

Just like he was happy for Peter when Mary McDonald finally took matters into her own hands, asked him out to dinner, and brought him into a relationship he never would have been brave enough to start on his own. Just like he was happy for Sirius when he met Kingsley (although, to be fair, Sirius could have thought of a more elegant way to meet his soulmate than get into a drunken fight with the bouncer at one of his regular gay bars).

All around Remus, his friends were using their soulmarks like road maps to find the people they would spend the rest of their lives with and it was working well. Marlene and Dorcas' wedding invitations had the same sunflowers blooming across the pages that both women had between their shoulder blades. Harry had just turned five months old and absolutely loved playing peekaboo now that he had some object permanence going for him. His favourite soft toy was a stuffed lion that evoked the proud and roaring beasts on his parents' backs. Sirius had finally bit the bullet and moved in with Kingsley, no matter how afraid of change he'd been, and was absolutely thriving.

He was happy for them, but it was at times like these where he was babysitting Harry on Valentine's Day—two days after the full moon when he was still sore and stiff from the change—that Remus couldn't help but resent living in a world with soulmarks in it. He didn't like himself for thinking that way, especially since Harry was a pretty cool baby by anybody's standards, but thought he did.

"We'll be okay," Remus smiled at Lily, Harry propped up in his arms. He waved the baby's little hand around. "Say goodbye, Harry. And tell your parents to get out of here before they miss their reservation…"

"Be good for Uncle Moony, sweetheart," Lily said, leaning down to kiss the baby's nose. She stood on her toes to kiss Remus' cheek next. "Thank you, Remus."

"Seriously, thank you," James said.

"Anytime," Remus said—which he meant. He loved his little nephew, even if he was about to start teething and thus even more slobbery than usual.

"Cheers," James said, kissing Harry's forehead before resting a hand on Lily's lower back and gently steering her out the door.

Remus had babysat enough that Harry didn't seem too traumatized about this turn of events. He chewed on his fist and looked around the room with those big emerald green eyes of his that were so uncannily like Lily's no matter how young he was.

"Alright," Remus said, gently taking the baby's fist out of his mouth. "If you're going to be teething, let's get you a pacifier or something better to chew on than your own limbs… come on, sweet pea."

Since Sirius had moved out, Remus essentially had the flat to himself. His landlady had promised not to make him pay full rent until one of them found a new tenant for Sirius' old room, but the building they lived in inspired little to no confidence or potential new roommates. Remus liked to call the building the Burrow, because of how cozy and mismatched it was due to all the new additions and reparations and fixes. Really, he wouldn't have it any other way though.

Remus enjoyed living alone, really. He missed Sirius, since they'd basically lived together since both being sorted into Gryffindor, but he liked the quietness of the flat. Not to mention the fact that with Sirius gone, nobody cranked the thermostat to unspeakable temperatures or left fingerprints on the window by the chair where Remus liked to read.

Still, Molly had warned him that she would be showing the flat today, so Remus had made sure to tidy up. There wasn't much to do since he was rather neat—Sirius had been the tornado keeping the flat in a perpetual state of disaster.

Naturally, Molly brought Remus a loaf of banana bread when she stopped by, and she had one of her sons, Charlie today, trailing her. The woman she'd brought with her had magenta hair put up in a high bun so Remus could see how the sides of her head had been shaved. Piercings lined her ears and a septum piercing underscored her nose.

"Remus, dear," Molly said, giving him a quick and motherly hug. "Turn up the heat, love, or you'll freeze! Is that leaky tap giving you any trouble? Did we finally manage to fix it?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," Remus said.

"Molly," she corrected him with a gentle slap to the arm. "Don't go giving Tonks here any ideas about calling me 'Mrs. Weasley' or anything. Tonks, love, this is Remus—he's the current tenant."

"Wotcher," she said, offering a smile that showed him yet another piercing on the tip of her tongue. She held out her hand and Remus shook it.

"A pleasure," Remus said.

"Do you have any new books?" Charlie piped up.

"I do," Remus said. Really, they were just manuscripts—usually of books about magical creatures—that various publishers sent to Remus for copyediting. It was nice work that Remus could do quietly and remotely throughout the month, which made it perfect for someone like him. Charlie absolutely loved them.

"Why don't you sit tight while I show Tonks around?" Molly asked, patting Charlie's head.

Remus fixed Charlie a quick cup of hot chocolate before setting him up with a book about Grindylows in the living room. The little boy had all sorts of questions about the mechanics of how Grindylows managed to breathe underwater, which kept them pretty busy chatting. Charlie asked if he could colour in the black-and-white sketches of the manuscript and Remus didn't see why not, so he dug up some coloured ink and an assortment of quills for her. From the other room, he heard Molly and Tonks going over rent and organizing a date upon which she could move in.

Tonks was pretty easy to live with. She was great, actually. They settled in a really great morning routine (Remus woke up, showered, and had the coffee waiting and the bathroom all cleared up by the time she came home from her run). On Sundays, they cooked food for the week together (she was eager to learn how but tended to burn toast). They both listened to the same radio programs on Wednesdays and rooted for the same Quidditch teams. They both liked the apartment on the cooler side and would rather freeze to death than pay for heat. They laughed about their flat's incongruities and quirks. They MacGyvered ways to fix the tap to avoid stressing out Molly.

And on this particular Friday night, when Tonks was too exhausted after a 12 hour shift to go out with friends as planned but desperately needed a drink, they were drunk and sitting on the rickety porch together. It was drizzling, but the way that the raindrops blurred the city lights and echoed off the pavement below them cocooned Remus. More than anything, the rain felt welcoming and soothing—more than a fair price to pay for damp socks. Maybe that was the alcohol talking.

Her hair was a shade of mustard yellow that complemented the warm brown of her eyes and the dark beauty spot at the corner of her lips. Her hair was packed up on the top of her head and she'd been walking around the flat in a sports bra and sweats since lugging herself home. That, and she had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders to wear like a cape.

She must have caught his eyes on her ribs where a circle containing waves decorated her skin.

"It's my soulmark," Tonks explained. "Not a tattoo. I'm a little afraid of getting a tattoo, honestly, in case I can't morph myself out of it."

"It's beautiful," Remus said. "Fluid and steady but always changing, just like you."

"Such deep thoughts," she said, though she smiled and changed her hair to a new shade of pine green as if to prove his point. She took the bottle of wine from his hands and took a swig. "What's your soulmark? I don't think I've ever seen it."

Remus might have lied to her, ordinarily, but he had just taken another swig of wine. Besides, Alice and Frank had just announced that they were expecting a second baby—so Remus was feeling particularly desperately romantic.

"I don't have one," he said.

"Impossible," Tonks said. "Everyone has one."

"I... well, I do, but it's gone," Remus said. "It was… It was destroyed when I was bitten. My shoulder—it's all scar tissue, really. I was so young that it never healed properly, still gives me trouble sometimes. You can tell that something was there but it's impossible to tell what it was through the blur."

A beat passed.

"I'm sorry," Tonks said. She took another swig of wine before passing the bottle back to Remus.

Charlie was colouring in manuscript pages decorated with diagrams of phoenix feathers today.

"This looks like my mama and dad's soul marks," he said conversationally.

"The phoenix or the feathers?" Tonks asked.

"Both," Charlie said. "They're lucky, they have two. I have one but Dad says that's enough if I do it right. Look."

He rolled up his jumper sleeve and showed them the mark near his elbow. It looked like a fang to Remus. An unusual mark, but its distinctiveness would serve Charlie well when he was old enough to care about it, if nothing else.

"Nice," Tonks said. "That's a cool one."

"Alright," Molly said, reappearing in the living room. She had a toolbox propped up on her hip and the other rested over her baby bump. "Oh, Charlie, were you supposed to colour on that?"

"We gave him that, it's alright Mrs.—"

"Molly," Tonks whispered hastily.

"Molly," Remus corrected himself.

"Well I hope you said thank you, love," Molly said, shooting her son a fond smile. "Are you ready to get going, now? I think we've left daddy alone with your other brothers for long enough..."

"Yes Mama," Charlie said.

"Thank you for having us, sorry about the sink again," Molly said.

"You should show us how to fix it one day for ourselves," Tonks suggested.

"Nonsense, love, that's not your job," Molly said. She patted down Charlie's hair affectionately. "Alright, well, close the door behind me, loves—let me know if it breaks again!"

Molly let herself out and left them alone sitting at the living room coffee table with the manuscript pages Charlie hadn't scribbled over.

Remus took a deep breath and Tonks looked him over for a second.

"It really bothers you, doesn't it?" she said, pushing a strand of magenta hair behind her ear. The simple motion sent her chandelier earrings tinkling. "All this stuff about soul marks?"

"It…" Remus took a deep breath. "I know it's silly, but it does."

"You realize that not having the mark doesn't mean you don't have a soulmate, right?" Tonks said. "I mean, you have a mark, it's just… hard to see or whatever. That doesn't mean you won't be able to—to meet your soulmate or interact with them or anything."

"I know," Remus said. "It's just… It's just one more way that I'm different, you know?"

"That's the point of soulmarks though, isn't it?" Tonks said. "To be different from everyone else, so that like can recognize like."

Remus had been babysitting Harry again and Tonks had worked a monstrously long shift on Valentine's Day, so they weren't in a very romantic mood. They were, however, in the mood to eat terrible store-bought chocolate and plough through their flat's liquor cabinet. It was too cold to sit on the porch, so they were sitting near the glass doors and watching the snow on the roads turn to slush under the freezing rain.

"At least the weather's piss poor," Remus said. "You know? Being alone on Valentine's Day would be worse if the snow was fluffy and romantic as if we were in some snowglobe…"

"We're not alone on Valentine's Day," Tonks said. She was colouring in spare pages loitering the coffee table with childsafe markers that they'd finally caved and invested in for when Charlie or another of the Weasley kids came over. She was a little too tipsy to draw within the lines, unfortunately. "We're together."

"You know what I mean," Remus said.

"No, I don't actually," Tonks said. She took a substantial gulp straight from the bottle of tequila that made Remus wince. She hated tequila. This would not go well in the morning.

"We're together, Remus," Tonks said. "And we could be together!"

"You just said that we are," Remus said. Maybe he was drunker than he'd thought he was. 3:00 a.m. on a Friday night or Saturday morning was such a liminal space to begin with, Remus had a hard time telling.

"But we could be… if you weren't so worried about the blurriness and you just did something because you could instead of wondering if you should…" She clucked her tongue and coloured more aggressively. He was worried she'd break Charlie's markers. She'd bleed through the parchment, at any rate.

"I have no idea what you're saying," Remus said.

"Because you don't listen," Tonks mumbled. "You're so good with kids and you're so observant and detail-oriented that you can see all the spelling mistakes and inaccuracies in the world, but you're also so… so thick. No, not thick, you're smart. Too smart, you overthink things when you should just do things."

"I do do things," Remus said through a mouthful of chocolate. Chocolate, he was eating chocolate. That was something.

"You should do something, if you're so lonely," Tonks said. She waved the marker at him. "Nobody cares that the bite blurs up your soulmark except for you. Don't get me wrong, it sucks that you got bitten, especially when you were so young. But nobody cares about not knowing except for you. Other people would just… trust their guts. You're kind of great, so other people would be lucky and happy to just be with you because they could without needing a sign from the world to confirm that they were in the right place."

"You don't know that," Remus mumbled.

Tonks rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his sweater past the elbow. She drew a circle on the inside of his forearm and filled it with rolling waves.

"There," she said. "There's your sign if you need it so badly. Now kiss me, Lupin."

He looked at the mark on his arm. It was scribbled onto his skin with childsafe marker— green childsafe marker at that—so it could easily be wiped off. But when he looked up at her he… he didn't want to.

He wanted to kiss her and so he did.

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts; Link Maker; Spring Bingo

Challenge(s): Beauty in the Abstract; Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; LEO MC; Rian-Russo Inversion (Y); Small Fry; Setting Sail; Old Shoes; Short Jog

Word Count: 2494

Spring Bingo

Space (Prompt): 5C (Rain/Drizzle)

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks (Technicolour Moon)

List (Prompt): Spring Micro 1 (Soul Marks AU)