Work Text:
Flying High
“I've loved it, but it's time to go.”
Isak Valtersen is flying high. The upcoming Quidditch World Cup is his fourth time competing for Norway's national team, the second time he's played the final, and the first time he's done it as Team Norway's captain. It would seem like Valtersen's career in quidditch has nowhere to go but up, but recently Norway's favourite chaser has announced his participation in this year's World Cup would mark his resignation from the sport.
Ahead of Team Norway's top secret training retreat, the thirty-one-year-old sat down with our very own Even Bech Næsheim for a chat.
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Valtersen was recruited by then-coach Peder Mohn for Bergen Bergtrollene and the Norwegian National Team at the tender age of sixteen, still very much entrenched in his studies at Durmstrang Institute. He played his first games with Team Norway during his last year of school at eighteen. The World Cup Final of '18, the first one Norway had qualified for in centuries, took place only weeks after he graduated and celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Though Norway lost that game, whispers of nepotism (Valtersen is close friends with Mohn's only daughter), were quickly dispersed by the impressive sixty points he scored for Team Norway.
When I meet Isak Valtersen, he is no longer the fresh-faced, wide-eyed, slightly cocky nineteen-year-old Norway first met in 2018, who earned himself the nickname “Bergen Ballerina” with his acrobatic and precise flying style. He is thirty-one years old, and time has left its marks on his face. There are laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and the five o'clock shadow sits on his square jaw like that of a man who's no longer trying to grow a beard with the eagerness of a boy, but has become accustomed to it.
We meet for breakfast at his Oslo home, which he shares with his partner of ten years, Even Bech Næsheim, himself also a retired quidditch player. It was the first of a number of notable wizarding homes designed by Magnus Fossbakken, a Durmstrang friend of Valtersen's who has been making a name for himself as a magical architect. Rumour has it, when Valtersen got recruited for Bergtrollene, he and his friends got drunk on firewhiskey and Valtersen promised that if he ever made it as a quidditch player, he'd let Fossbakken design his house.
“Oh my god, we were so drunk that night,” Isak laughs, looking off to the side like he's remembering. “Shit, I can't believe how long it's been. We're getting old, baby.”
Even snorts and grabs himself one of the banana-oat muffins.
“That's generally what tends to happen,” he says. “Did I ever tell you how cool I thought that was? That you asked Magnus to do the house even though he'd never overseen his own project before?”
Isak looks back at Even and shrugs, a guilty little grimace on his face.
“We were loaded then, Even. If he'd fucked up we could have afforded to have the entire house redone,” he says. “It'd have been annoying, but. We could have.”
“Are you telling me you knew that when you agreed to go through with it?”
“Obviously, come on,” Isak scoffs. “Do you really think I'd let Magnus build our home without a plan B?”
Even snorts a laugh and then shakes his head disapprovingly.
“And here I thought how sweet it was how supportive you were being of your friend...”
“I was! I let him do it, didn't I? I just wanted to be prepared for all the eventualities,” Isak insists.
“He did a good job though,” Even says, looking around. He knew Magnus had done well in his magical architecture studies, but designing an entire house for them from scratch was no mean feat, and Magnus had pulled it off impressively well.
The space reflects both Valtersen and his partner's propensity and fondness for open spaces and flying, with large windows and an even larger garden. When I point this out to him, he looks around as though he's never seen his own home before.
“You know, I never thought about it like that,” he says. “I just like all the light.”
“You think he really did that on purpose? The flying thing?” Isak asks, still looking around.
“Um, yeah,” Even laughs, feeling his eyes crinkle. “Has he never told you? He was so excited about it.”
Isak shakes his head, eyes wide with amused disbelief.
“No, he never said anything. Just asked if I liked it.”
“Well, you're an intimidating critic,” Even says.
Isak throws up his hands in a gesture of exasperated surrender.
“He's my friend!” he insists.
Even grins at him.
“Yeah, exactly. He wanted to impress you.”
Speaking of flying – why the resignation? Valtersen exhales a long sigh and takes a drink from his cup of coffee. His breakfast is yoghurt-egg-salad on whole-grain rye bread, a strong cup of coffee, and some apple slices with peanut butter and almonds – as a treat, he says. Protein, carbs, fat, and fibre.
“I just want to eat muffins for breakfast too,” he jokes, gesturing to the banana-oat muffin I'm eating. I offer it to him, but he turns it down with a laugh and goes on.
“No, but really… I've had a good run. I'm thirty-one years old. Quidditch is a demanding sport. I'm in good shape, and I can still keep up and teach the youngsters a thing or two, but I'm increasingly tired after each game. I don't want to wait until some hopped up nineteen-year old comes along and takes my spot.”
It's a joking allusion to Lars Lundekvam, Bergtrollene and Norway's star chaser of the time of Valtersen's first world cup, who joked at the press conference afterwards that if they hadn't lost the game, Valtersen would have probably made him look obsolete and put him out of a job. The next time Valtersen played in the World Cup, it was with Lundekvam as a coach, and although rumours of animosity have followed both for the entirety of Valtersen's career, they both vehemently deny any such claims and insist they are and always have been good friends.
If Valtersen feels he is getting old, then why not coach, like his former team mate and captain Lundekvam and so many others do?
Valtersen takes a moment to think about it, looking off throughout the large windows into the garden beyond. It's a sunny day today, birch leaves shivering in a light breeze, fluffy clouds on a blue sky. Oslo is showing herself from her best side.
“The truth is, I just don't want to,” Valtersen says, looking back at me. “I like playing quidditch, I like flying. I even like captaining. But I don't love it like a coach has to. Coaches support a team in a way that doesn't ever stop. They take the job home with them – they have to. I'm not prepared to do that. I've loved it, but it's time to go.”
“You're not going to miss it?”
“The early mornings and gruelling training and pressure to perform at my best at every game?” Isak snorts. “Yeah, I'm totally going to miss it.”
Even rolls his eyes.
“The camaraderie and the adrenaline. The fun. The game.”
Isak sighs a little.
“Yeah, I'll miss it a little, but. It's just nostalgia. I'll miss it the same way I miss Durmstrang. I don't actually want to go back, but I like looking back. I'm grateful for the life and the friends it gave me,” he says. “Do you miss it?”
Even hums contemplatively and then shakes his head.
“No, not anymore. I did, at first. I hadn't planned on leaving so soon,” he says.
Isak's face darkens.
“Hey, it's okay,” Even says and adds with a teasing wink, “It wasn't ideal for me anyway; the stress, the early mornings. And I get to do this. I'm not done with quidditch entirely yet, but this is enough.”
“You know I would've--” Isak says, but Even cuts him off.
“I know,” he says with a smile. “And it meant a lot to me – means a lot to me. But I could have never asked you to jeopardise your career like that.”
“I would have done it gladly,” Isak insists stubbornly, and Even sighs at him fondly.
So, if it's not quidditch, then what is it going to be? Valtersen reportedly received top marks in his classes as a school boy and was a self-confessed know-it-all. According to his few remarks about his school days, what time he hadn't spent on the pitch, he'd spent at the library, studying.
“I'd love to go to a non-magical university,” Valtersen says. “They learn so many things there isn't any room for in the magical curriculum. They learn about the human body and about the planet, about space and the stars. Once we get to Durmstrang, all of that gets left behind, and honestly, by the end of it, most of us have forgotten what we've learned in primary school, haven't we?”
So, politics? Valtersen laughs and shakes his head.
“God no! Can you imagine? I'd be terrible at it. But there are other ways to open opportunities for more research to be done into how some of these things connect to our magic. Our healers, for instance, focus so much on the magical maladies that can befall us and the magical cures for them, all the ways the body can just get hurt almost get left behind. And that's not even getting into illnesses of the mind.”
Valtersen's own family has a history of mental illness. His mother has been receiving non-magical care for almost a decade now, after Valtersen found the wizarding world was unprepared to deal with her illness adequately. When his partner, formerly of the Oslo Occamies and two times Team Norway seeker, retired from the quidditch pitch after an injury in '22, it was amidst rumours of a mental breakdown having caused his terrible fall at the World Cup quarter finals, and the Oslo Occamies having dismissed him. Neither party ever confirmed the rumours, but Valtersen seems to have carried a grudge against the Occamies to this day, infamously missing out on a friendly match of Trollene against the Occamies in favour of a holiday with his partner in '23.
“There are a lot of things I could do, but I haven't figured the details out just yet. For the first while, I'll probably just focus on my work with the Nerida Foundation,” he says.
The Nerida Foundation, named for Nerida Vulchanova, Durmstrang Institute's founder, is a privately-funded research group focused on practical magical research. It means to make available to the public the sort of research that is not being done at Durmstrang Institute, or its sister institute, the Monrantik University. Valtersen is one of the founding members, along with, among others, Sana Bakkoush and Noora Sætre, another pair of school friends of his. Healer Bakkoush is currently heading a team of doctors and magical experts to explore the links between magical maladies and mental illnesses there.
So he doesn't think he's going to join the researchers at Nerida Foundation?
“I would love to,” Valtersen says. “Maybe. But there's a lot I'd have to catch up on, and I'm wondering if I'm not more useful elsewhere. Cash in on this face, you know?”
“You know if you want to go and take classes at Monrantik, that's okay, right?” Even says. “Even if it's just for you. Just because you want to learn.”
Isak sighs.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But I have momentum now, you know? People still know who I am, and they still care. In a couple years I'll just be that washed-up ex-player who thinks he's still relevant when the whole country will have moved on to some other player. Amalie, probably, she's fantastic.”
“That doesn't matter. The people you work with want to help the Nerida Foundation out because they care about what's being done there, Isak. You, Sana, and Noora build something incredible there,” Even insists.
“Still,” Isak says. “This is how I can help best, and Sana was thinking about petitioning the hospital about instituting some of her findings from the Foundation. She wants them to open a whole new wing. That's going to cost money.”
“I just want you to think about what it is that you want as well,” Even says.
Isak smiles at him, his face softening into that gentle fondness that still makes Even's heart sing with happiness. Over a decade later and he can't imagine ever finding a better person than Isak Valtersen.
“I've been doing what I want this whole time,” Isak says. “And I do want to do this.”
“I'm just making sure,” Even says and leans over the table to kiss Isak when he beckons. “I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy. Very happy.”
If he hadn't done quidditch, does he think he would have done something like that? Magical research?
“Yes, absolutely,” he says immediately. “I was always fascinated by how magic works – what the theory behind a spell is, why certain ingredients in potioneering react the way they do under certain conditions. And my father is non-magical, so I went to a non-magical primary school while my mother taught me at home. So I had access to all sorts of books as well. I was always intrigued by non-magical science, by the ingenuity of it all. There's ingenuity in inventing spells too, but when we're casting them we often don't even think about that.”
He looks off again for a moment and then shrugs.
“I suppose maybe I just want to remind people of what magic actually is. That it's an ability, a possibility, something we can shape and use for so much more than we have been. That we're not limited to just repeating the same things that are already in our textbooks, because someone had to put them there in the first place. Spells and potions didn't fall from the sky. Someone made them. And so we can make new ones if we're faced with new problems.”
Valtersen's public support of and involvement with the cause has certainly helped get The Nerida Foundation from a grassroots movement to the established research centre it is now. There have been talks of Durmstrang Institute wanting to offer its upper level students the opportunity to visit, maybe for the Foundation to host guest lectures.
“You're amazing, you know that?” Even says.
Isak rolls his eyes.
“No more than anyone else,” he says.
“You're the most amazing to me,” Even insists.
Isak grins.
“Well, you're easy to impress.”
So what does his partner think of this change of career?
“Even...” Isak whines. “Do we have to?”
“Answer the question please, Isak,” Even says with a grin.
“He's cool with it. He just wants me to be happy, you know? And he knows how exhausting quidditch gets, of course,” Valtersen says. He's notoriously private and reluctant to talk about his relationship, so he speaks slowly, each word measured and considered before it is given. “But, you know, I've known him for… Nerida's wand. More than half my life now. I learned how to fly from him.”
“You did not. You were already flying circles around most of the Durmstrang players when you got there,” Even says.
“Still!” Isak says. “None of them flew like you. I didn't know how to fly like you.”
“Well, you hadn't hit your growth spurt yet,” Even teases. Isak picks up an almond and throws it at him over the table, making Even laugh.
“There's no competition between us. You're the better flyer,” Even says.
Isak sighs.
“But I learned from you. I always wanted to be as good as you were.”
“You got signed at sixteen,” Even reminds him. “A year before I did, and I'm two years older than you.”
“I got signed at nineteen, same as you, two years after you did. It was all conditional until then, you know that,” Isak corrects.
Valtersen's partner was the second-youngest player on the Norwegian national team at the World Cup of '18, after Valtersen himself. It was there that they formed a “properly close friendship”, as Valtersen puts it, that eventually blossomed into a romance two years later. After Bech Næsheim's fall during the quarter finals in '22, he retired at 25. Bech Næsheim took a year to recover from his injury, before becoming Magical Norway's quidditch correspondent.
Does he plan on taking that job then, after he's done his work with the Nerida Foundation ? I joke.
“Yes,” he says. “Obviously.”
And what about the rumours that the two of them are set to tie the knot soon?
“Oh my god, are those really circling again? You know I'm not going to answer that,” Isak says, shooting Even a look. “I don't see how the fuck that's anyone's business but ours.”
“But just for me,” Even says, and pulls a ring out of his pocket, putting it on the table between them, watching Isak's eyes go wide with a grin on his lips. “Will you marry me?”
“Are you fucking serious?” Isak asks.
“I'm fucking serious,” Even confirms.
“Well, yes,” Isak says. “Yes, of course I'll marry you. But you're not putting it in the interview.”
Even's grin widens and he picks up the ring, waiting for Isak to hold out his hand so he can slip it on his finger. When it's settled, Even swipes his thumb over it, activating the enchantment, a glowing number 21.
“When we moved in together,” Isak says and looks up with a smile.
Even hums.
“Yeah. That meant so much to me.”
Isak gets up and walks around the table, never letting go of Even's hand until he's pushed his chair back from the table and settled in Even's lap, arms around his neck.
“I love you,” he says.
Even nudges Isak's nose with his own for the way that makes him smile and then nods.
“I love you too.”
No comment.
The End