A/N: Written for the Chocolate Frog Cards: (silver) shrake - incorporate someone fishing into your story. Word count: 631

With his eyes closed, Sirius leaned his head back. A gentle breeze ruffled his air. It felt like something out of a fantasy.

Sirius had known from the moment he had arrived at the Potter estate the first time that it would be a world away from his family's miserable townhouse in London. He couldn't for the life of him understand why his parents chose to live in such a place when they could have used the Black fortune to purchase land like this.

The Potter house was as bright and cheerful as Grimmauld Place was dark and dreary, but on top of that, there was wide open space to enjoy yourself surrounding it. Even if Grimmauld Place had been picked up and dropped onto this land, Sirius would have had a brighter childhood with free reign of the grounds.

"I'm telling you," he said to James, his eyes still closed, "this place really is a miniature Hogwarts."

He didn't need to open his eyes to imagine the scowl on James' face.

"It's not," James insisted. "Hogwarts is a castle. That," Sirius could feel him gesture towards the house, "is not a castle."

"No, but you have a lake!"

Sirius opened his eyes and gestured at the water in front of them. The wind was strong enough that the water wasn't perfectly calm, and Sirius found the ripples on the lake's surface to be hypnotic.

There were fishing poles in their hands, but nothing had taken the bait. Sirius was starting to wonder how many fish there actually were in the water, but sitting out on the dock was peaceful enough that he didn't feel the need to drill James about it.

He'd never been fishing before; James had. Perhaps fishing was a much slower activity than he had imagined it would be. That would explain why James had looked sceptical when Sirius had first made the suggestion.

"Plenty of houses have lakes, Sirius. That doesn't make the house Hogwarts."

Sirius had spent his entire life either in London or at Hogwarts, so he couldn't confirm or deny James' assertion. He had a feeling, though, that lakes weren't as common a feature of houses as James was trying to imply.

You'd have to get lucky to just have one on your land, and he couldn't imagine the Muggles would want to dig them without the help of magic. Lakes were enjoyable, but he wasn't sure they were worth that level of work. He couldn't believe Muggles took the time to garden without the aid of magic.

"Not my fault you can't appreciate what you have," Sirius shot back. "Honestly, I don't know why you insist on arguing. You should be appreciative. Who wouldn't want to live at a miniature Hogwarts?"

"Yeah," James said with a roll of his eyes, "who wouldn't want to live at school year round?"

Sirius had had to accept years ago that James would never appreciate the level of fondness he felt for Hogwarts. Few people did. Of his closest friends, only Remus came close to understanding what he felt, but it was still a very different thing for the two of them.

His grip on his fishing pole had loosened as time wore on and nothing happened, but suddenly, there was a tug. He jumped, fumbling for the pole that he'd nearly dropped in the water.

"Prongs!" he yelled unnecessarily. "Something bit the hook. There's something there! What do I do?"

James rolled his eyes at Sirius' panic.

"I told you," he said. "You reel it in."

As it turned out, Sirius caught the master fish who knew how to get a snack without being reeled in, but he still bragged about the encounter for days. One might have thought he'd successfully reeled in a whale.