you're in the middle of the ride [open]

[viktor anastasiy desislav krum]

There were many good things about being the flying professor, not the least of which was that Viktor got to spend all of his time outside. He knew that when winter came some students wouldn't enjoy that aspect of his class, but Viktor was quite a bit sturdier than most of them, at least when it came to his ability to withstand cold weather, so he wasn't particularly worried by the coming cold. He was slightly more worried by letting them watch him fly. Anyone who had seen him fly in his prime knew that his injury had changed his flying style significantly. He was no longer graceful or light. He was still a good flier, of course, but he wasn't Viktor Krum. Oh well. Viktor had tried his best not to let his apprehensions keep him from doing what he still loved to do, so that day, he was walking onto the pitch not with the intentions of teaching a lesson, but of flying for himself.

[minerva mary mcgonagall]

As someone who prided herself on keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground, it wasn't often that Minerva found herself near the Quidditch pitch- save for during matches of course, but that was different. That was for Gryffindor. Today, however, the sunlight streaming through her office window had tempted her out into the great outdoors, and once she was there, there was no way that she was heading back into the somewhat oppressive warmth of the castle. Minerva was a Scot, born and bred, and there was nothing she liked better than feeling a cool breeze on her cheeks, unless it was seeing Gryffindor win the House Cup. That and the expression that it always put on Severus' face... Oh.

There she went again. Minerva still had trouble with coming to terms with the loss of her colleague. Oh, he'd never been the most sociable of beings, and he acted like a bat with a sore head on most days as well as being unashamedly biased towards Slytherin, but he had still been a colleague and, at the end of the day, a friend. They had been working towards the same goal, even if she hadn't known it during that last dreadful year... It had been a shock to the witch to discover that actually, Snape was acting on Dumbledore's orders all along. But then, how could she have known? Severus had been able to fool the Dark Lord himself, with all his skills at Legilimency. Minerva McGonagall was a capable witch and a good judge of character, but she couldn't compete with that.