A Nothingness, Doubled
The glaciers cut a jagged line against the sky, ice glowing blue in the twilight as bright and impossible as everything this close to the pole. To the top of the world.
Viktor knows that there is no 'up,' not really. The Earth is just a ball careening through space around a massive star. But every map and globe he's ever seen drew a picture in his mind. This high up, it's impossible not to feel like he really is approaching the crest.
Leaning forward he closes the space between his chest and the broomstick. A burst of speed. The icy wind tears at his face and his eyes water.
Durmstrang looms in the west, all spiking towers and battlements made double, reflected in the fjord below. A frozen castle hewn of frozen stone. Its gloomy halls and bone-deep chill have never felt like home to Viktor, but year after year for the last five years he's loved returning to school anyway.
This far out, students aren't enclosed into pitches or tiny acreages for flying. Durmstrang Island, at the northernmost point of Norway, is defended from muggles in as many ways as God and Wizard know. Glaciers as tall as mountains, an unplottable location in the sea, and spell upon defensive spell excluding all but the wildlife. Theirs is a fortress of ice and space and solitude.
Viktor closes his eyes. They're above the mountains and there's nothing to hit, nothing to fear. Just endless sky ahead. When sight is gone the only thing left to feel is speed. Faster, faster, faster he pushes.
"Viktor!" a voice calls from the distance. Slowing down, he turns to see that Anders is little more than a speck in the distance. "Where are you going?"
As a reply, Viktor just points. Out. Out into the flat and the nothing.
Anders, Wiebke and Vlad zoom closer before coming to a shuddering stop.
"What is it you are trying to do, Viktor?" asks Wiebke, nose pink and stuffy from the frigid air.
"Just fly," Viktor explains. "North, as far as you can, but no opening your eyes. The last one back to the castle wins."
Four smirks play on four mouths. "Okay." Wiebke nods.
Anders is clever enough to wrap his scarf around his face, covering eyes, nose, and mouth, for warmth as well as insurance against cheating. The rest space out, giving a wide berth so as not to crash, and follow suit.
"Ready?" Viktor cries. "Jetzt!"
His broom pierces the sky like a hot needle through wax. The wind roars against his ears. He can't see anything, but he knows that the coast is slipping behind him. He can almost feel it; the vacant sky above, the Barents Sea retreating below. Air and water will look like the same thing now; just blurs of blue. Emptiness reflecting itself infinitely. A nothingness, doubled.
Time passes. An hour? More. The cold makes limbs rigid, but it doesn't matter. They're all in the right place and have no need for motion anyway. He might have fallen in and out of sleep. It would be impossible to tell.
Viktor no longer hears the wind shrieking in his ears, he's grown accustomed. In its absence there is only perfect, impossible silence. There are no islands until Svalbard, still hours away. There is nowhere to land, nowhere to stop, just Viktor and the sky.
It doesn't scare him. If he could say goodbye to the ground forever and live the rest of his days above, he would. But no creature lives solely in the kingdom of the air. Even the birds and flies come down to nest.
Slowing to a stop Viktor feels awash with warmth. He knows it must be below freezing, but without the wind lashing against him the heat from his own body is extreme.
Unwinding his scarf he opens his eyes to a dazzling night. After so long with his eyes closed, the brightness of the rising moon is almost blinding. As far as he can see in every direction, there is only stars. Sky and sea are made distinct only for how in one, the stars twinkle, while in the other they ripple.
A kind of loneliness seizes at his heart, but it neither scares him nor makes him sad. It's just so, so beautiful out here.
Time stretches and contracts among such old things. The only visible change is in the shifting of the cosmos. Viktor hasn't seen the others since he took off, but he's certain he'll be the last one back. He doesn't know how long he's hovered there, in the sky above the sea among the stars. But the time has come to go. Fishing his compass necklace from the front of his robes he turns his broom southward. He will have to leave here for a little while, fly back, and stay there a little while.
And when he returns to the castle, he knows he will return as someone who has seen infinity.
_
A/N: This is something of a companion piece to "Whose Am I," which is Hermione-centric and a bit heavier in the 'stuff actually happening' department. Here, I was mostly interested in just writing something sort of beautiful and trying to see Viktor in a new light :)