Remus was grateful when James started telling the story. He hadn't know what it would be in the end, or what it was even about, but it filled its purpose as a distraction from Remus's little problem for the both of them.
And then Remus began to understand. This wasn't a distraction, not to James. This was his luggage, and a story Remus recognized almost instantly, for all that James tried to keep it as vague as possible. Remus had been around at the time, and ended up looking at the bed while James spoke until his voice came out sharp, and he looked up to meet James's gaze. Yes, he supposed when James put it like that, he could understand how much he might hate being right. Of course he might be wrong; many people had been young and in the war, killed... But how many did James know? How many of them had James called all sorts of names, publicly hated?
That James brought up his father at all was a surprise. James didn't speak of his parents much. Remus suspected he still mourned them. They were, Remus suspected, too great for casual conversation, in James's eyes. They were his heroes and they had died, both of them, leaving him behind, and James still looked for ways to make them proud. Remus hadn't known the Potters all that well and was certainly not in the position to tell James he was wrong about them. That they would approve of what he'd done or neglected to do. He didn't know, and it seemed rather poor form to go telling James he was wrong about them.
He felt like a right arse for having insisted that whatever James had gotten from his luggage 'had better be good'. It was loads better than his, better reason to mope, anyway. But so much worse. Remus could only imagine how he must be feeling.
For the longest time, he didn't know what to say. Maybe his dad would have done something better, something more. And James so wanted to live up to his father. It struck him then that James really could be serious when the occasion called for it.
"Have you spoken to him?" he asked softly, his voice sounding terribly loud after the long period of silence. What had happened between the two of them, Remus wondered. He'd never witnessed any arguments between the two of them. They had all been frustrated with Regulus Black for having chosen to become a Death Eater, Sirius first among them, Remus was sure. Or had been. What had passed between Regulus and James that he should feel so guilty for what had become of the other boy? Regulus wasn't his responsibility, they hadn't even been friends, as far as Remus knew. So why feel so strongly? "The boy," he specified. "He's here, isn't he? I think... you might be sitting on his bed."