"I very well do not have any non-medicinal herbal substances for you to partake in," he said, pulling his best serious-Remus face. It wasn't very convincing, especially since he added a, "We'll see," and a shifty glance to the statement a half a second later.
He laughed and shook his head then, pouring another shot for both of them. "No, no... you misunderstand. If they'd have done what I told them to do it would have gotten done faster, instead of pissing around with needless additions. We all - well, James and Sirius and I - put in equal effort. And Dumbledore did not help," he defended firmly. "He merely gave us charmed parchment. I highly doubt he charmed it. It's little better than what you could find at a joke shop in those days, but it did spark the idea."
He sat back in the chair again. "You see," he continued, "a lot of those passages were built just so I could attend Hogwarts. And of course I knew where they were and I found plenty of other passages exploring during breaks my first year - before the others even knew what I am. And I had to know how to sneak out without anyone finding me. So Dumbledore taught me a few things when I was very young and I just... expanded my knowledge from that starting point. It was meant to be purely utilitarian, I assure you. Then James and Sirius got hold of it and, well... you have the map as it is today. I had another map before that which we had to figuratively tear apart to see how it worked. That was all us. But it was just building something better out of what we had. So don't get all offended. We did put all the work into that ourselves. I just had an unfair advantage in that I was actually meant to have the thing."
Remus downed another couple of shots, not sure what he was even up to now, but it was starting to burn going down, so he figured it was about time for another smoke. "I know," Remus said. "He was losing it a bit at the end. I..." he started to say and then wasn't really sure how to finish that statement. "I did what I could, but it was never enough. Used to be, but Azkaban did horrible things to his mind and there was nothing that could be done. It's better we remembered him a hero instead of what he would have inevitably become." Or that's what Remus kept telling himself. It helped ease the sting. He still couldn't help feeling like he had failed though. Still, there were elements he didn't want to get into.