The two snowmobiles came to a stuttering halt.
"We need to go this way!", Aziraphale insisted loudly and pointed in the appropriate direction.
It came out muffled through his face protection and Crowley looked at him slightly confused.
"What did you say?", he shouted back, trying to be heard over the wind.
Annoyed, the angel persuaded the cold to leave him alone for a minute and pulled down the fabric.
"We need to go this way!", he repeated and indicated the direction again.
"No, we need to go that way!", said Crowley, shook his head and pointed in a vastly different one. "Angel, we're completely off course!"
"What are you talking about?", said Aziraphale. "Look here."
He showed Crowley the compass [1] he was holding in what the demon thought was a slightly condescending manner.
"Yes?", said Crowley. "It points to the Magnetic North Pole. Which means we go the way the needle is pointing. Which is that way."
He raised his arm to show Aziraphale again. The angel looked at Crowley as if he had grown two heads.
"Crowley, you do know the Magnetic North Pole – which is actually the south pole, not that it matters – isn't in the same place as the geographic one, do you?"
A sinking feeling crept up on Crowley and settled somewhere in his gut.
"Angel", he said slowly, "Where do you think we're going?"
"To the Geographic North Pole. Obviously."
"No, we're not!", exclaimed Crowley, finding his dreadful suspicion confirmed. "What the – why would we head for geographic north?! I was navigating us to the magnetic one!"
He wasn't exactly sure how much the distance between them was, but he was fairly certain that it was quite far.
"Why on Earth would we head for magnetic north?", asked Aziraphale, similarly aghast and momentarily forgetting that it was really the south pole. "I thought the whole point was to stand at the northern-most point! At the top of the Earth, if you will!"
"Angel, the Earth is a sphere! There is no top! Magnetic north is the only thing that even remotely makes sense in terms of being a point of interest."
"Actually", replied Aziraphale testily and folded his arms, "it's a spheroid. Which means it's flatter at the top and bottom."
Crowley huffed.
"The Earth does not have a top or bottom", he claimed.
"Yes, it does", said Aziraphale and then, with a triumphant expression, added his killer argument: "I've read all about it on Wikipedia."
Crowley opened his mouth to say something. Crowley shut his mouth.
"Now, if you don't mind", the angel continued smugly, "I will keep heading to the actual north pole."
And with that he pulled up his face protection, restarted the engine of his snowmobile and raced off in the direction of geographic north [2].
###
"I can see the flags!", yelled Aziraphale enthusiastically.
Finally, he thought. That had taken long enough, although considering that they each had been trying to navigate to points several hundred kilometers apart at first, the duration of the journey had not been entirely surprising. Still; they had made it, which came as a relief to both of them. For Crowley because he was a snake and out of his element – the snowstorms and icy-white nothingness were starting to get to him – and for Aziraphale because he missed his books. Not to mention that while the angel had wanted to see polar bears in general, he had not planned to get quite such a close-up view of one of them.[3]
Aziraphale turned to beam at Crowley and then frowned when he saw the demon's smirk.
"Why are you grinning like that?", he asked, bewildered and mildly suspicious.
"Nothing, angel. Nothing at all. Oh look, we're here."
They had reached a half-circle made up from a number colourful flags from different nations; all fluttering madly in the icy arctic wind. In front of it were a small pole striped in red and white, with a glass ball on top, and a big sign post.
Aziraphale almost immediately killed his engine and jumped off the snowmobile excitedly. Crowley meanwhile stayed seated and watched the proceedings with interest.
Feeling slightly giddy with anticipation, the angel stepped between the flags. It looked surreal, he thought, this proof of human life in the middle of nowhere. He shifted his eyes towards the sign post next to the marking pole.
It read: Magnetic North Pole.
His face fell. Crowley snickered.
"Oh, you utter…", gasped Aziraphale. "Wait until I get my hands on you, you manipulative little – you just had to meddle with the compass, didn't you-!"
Crowley cackled and hit the gas pedal.
.
[1] It was a regular one, which by all accounts should not have worked this close to the pole but neither Aziraphale nor Crowley knew this and therefore it did.
[2]Though he did stop after about a kilometer to wait for Crowley to catch up.
[3] Crowley had taken a video.
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A/N: This is not what the Magnetic North Pole looks like. What I described is (ironically) the Ceremonial South Pole plus a sign post. I didn't find anything about whether or not there even is a sign at the Magnetic North Pole but considering that its movement has sped up considerably in the past few years and is now at about 50km/year I presume not. However, Crowley expected flags and a sign post so there were flags and a sign post.
According to the best of my google-fu abilities magnetic north is over 1000km from the nearest permanently inhabited place and its distance from true north is in the vicinity of 500km. The nearest anything to the Geographic North Pole is the floating Russian base Camp Barneo, which is reconstructed every year and usually less than 100km from the Geographic North other words: Please don't try to go either Pole never mind from one to the other equipped with nothing but snowmobiles and a compass unless you are an occult or ethereal being who literally can't die.