Remus chuckled, dodging the book easily, as it wasn't thrown at a particularly high velocity. "Now, James, that isn't how you treat a book." he teased in his best teacher voice. Upon his friend's question, he pondered for a moment, chewing on the inside of his lip. "I think that he knows exactly the deeds we did, because you'll find he did the same. War is disgusting... " a shadow crossed his face, and suddenly he looked a touch older. "It's grim and brutal and so many other things. War is something that no civil man should ever see. And, as civil men, we were forced to do many uncivil things...and your son is included in that. And really, if you had known your Father fought a war like ours... if you knew he'd killed people in the name of all he believed in, defending all he loved... would you be disgusted, or proud?" he asked gently, knowing that James, despite his best efforts, tended to have a guilty conscience.
Part of his mind balked at the idea of what Harry must have gone through, through from what he could tell, it seemed like the only person Harry had ever killed was Voldemort. Was that right? Maybe he'd missed something. He certainly had no desire to talk about it with Harry unless Harry brought it up. He couldn't help but shoot Remus a slightly accusing glance. As a younger man James had idolized his father, and to a certain extent still did. Even he was able to see that. It was pretty much impossible for him to be disgusted with anything his father might have done. "Come on, my dad couldn't have done something dishonourable if he tried," James replied. The same wasn't true of himself, and he knew that, too. Tooling about the back of his thoughts was his uncertainty about what he would have done if he'd been in Harry's position, if he'd have told them to stop. Merlin, if Remus had been keen to join Sirius' raised wand it was difficult to imagine himself doing much less. Conveniently, the matter was pretty much moot. "Not that it matters," he dismissed. Remus had given the response James had needed to hear, so he moved on to another vein of curiosity, shifting again to put himself a little closer to Remus as he inquired, "Hey, did he ever tell you what memory he used?" It was perhaps an overly personal question ask his son directly, but if Remus knew, that was certainly acceptable.
He shook his head and smiled just slightly. "James, of course your Dad wouldn't do anything dishonourable. Quite the contrary... don't you think if he'd been in the same position you were, that he'd have defended his family and friends as vehamently as you did? You did nothing dishonourable.People have been declared war heros for much less than what you did." He raised an eyebrow to the next question. "Yes, actually. He said that he wasn't sure it was a real memory at all, but more of an impression." He searched his memories, retrieving the information with a bit of difficulty. "He said that his happy memory was you and Lily, just talking to him." he chuckled softly, looking at James. "He said he didn't know if it was real, but it's the happiest he'd ever felt. And, he formed a patronus after only two tries... I told him he'd have given you a run for your money."
It would have been impossible to tell exactly what vague memory Harry had summoned up, but at least it was something he could tap into, the briefest of moments when his memories overlapped with Harry's life, him and Lily saying Merlin knew what to their remarkably pink newborn son. James had never really been aware just how... pink infants were. His broad smile hitched up. "Well, you know they say about the right sort of teacher," he conceded. "You reckon you'd go back to it if you could?" Harry had said that Remus was the best defense teacher they'd ever had.