Nadine Heridan

Nadine Juliet Heridan, born 16 November 1987 in the human world, is a marked witch born to shapeshifter Herrick Heridan and witch Anastacia Heridan nee Pritchard. She is the school bully who was emotionally abused by her mother and is (secretly) glad to be at SAE away from them, using her heritage as en excuse to get as far away from them as possible. She is horrid to Whitney and her group until the third book. After, she joins forces with them after her best friend Ayesha dies. She also returns to SAE in the third book, allying herself (reluctantly) with Whitney and her friends as she realises they're on the same side. Although reluctant and still mean at first, she soon comes to respect and care for the group - befriending some of the members - and Nadine is shown in a kinder light.

                                                                            Nadine

Appearance
Nadine is physically 14 at the beginning of Hellrider, and is described as having very big, long, silky straight platinum blonde hair, cold turquoise blue eyes and pale skin. She has her ears pierced and the top of her right ear rim pierced. She wears lots of make-up and almost always has a bright orange face whoch clashes badly with her naturally light hair. She has a long oval-shaped face, high cheekbones, long strong straight nose and full cupid-bow shaped lips. She is quite tall, at around 5"4.

Throughout Hellrider, she grows to 5"6, and wears less make-up and wears foundation that corresponds with her skin colour. Although she believes she is ugly naturally, she is actually really pretty naturally and lots of people comment she is very pretty without make-up. She also gets her belly button pierced and ears pierced again - in the lobe in each side.

Her school skirt is usually too short and her uniform a mess. Outside of school, she dresses quite scantily and stylishly.

Personality
Nadine, at the beginning of Hellrider, is nothing more than a bitchy, spoiled, arrogant and cruel person who bullies people who are "weaker" than she is. She is snobby, vain and shallow and looks down her nose at Whitney and her group.

Her words can be very spiteful - she knows exactly where people's weak spots are due to her mind-reading. She is clever, witty and intuitive, able to come up with sharp comebacks if someone was to stand up to her, or she'd just laugh at them.

She is very manipulative and controlling - blackmailing Whitney in one chapter and constantly manipulating the Shadow Squad. She is self-preservative and cowardly and will not take on someone who is bigger than her, and will just completely ignore them instead (partly because she's scared of them.) She is also vindictive - wanting to get Whitney back after the fight. She is sly and deceptive, able to successfully deceive everyone around her of her true identity.

In reality, she's just trying to protect herself. She is self-serving and selfish, and actually hates the fact that people are prejudiced against people like her. Because of the pain she has experienced due to prejudice, she tries to block it out and instead project her pain onto others so that they know what it feels like. The reason why Nadine bullies Katie is because she is jealous of her purity - not because she's a runt. This shows she is a very jealous character.

Nadine hates herself and is a pessimistic and self-loathing character. She actually feels remorse for her actions, but only continues doing so because she doesn't want anyone finding out about her true heritage, which would result in her possibly getting killed. Because of this, she doesn't allow people to truly get close to her at first and keeps her true thoughts and feelings bottled up inside of her - apart from her anger.

Nadine is judgmental and very temperamental, so much so that her anger can be compared to that of Whitney's - which is where they both clash.

However, after the third book, Nadine sides with Whitney and stays truly loyal to the group. Nadine is extremely loyal to those she cares about. She is actually pretty empathetic, able to understand Whitney's and Sapphire's pain at the prejudice that she receives, but usually tends to ignore her empathy, making her come across as apathetic and stoic instead. She is able to ompletely shut off her emotions and compassion and can completely block her mind, making it impenetrable. She feels guilt and remorse throughout the series for her past actions and is willing to do anything to gain back trust and respect and friendship.

Nadine is ambitious and determined, which is part of the reason she joined the Shadow Squad at first. She is a very good actress, able to pretend to be all nice and sweet in order for people to do her bidding.

As the series goes on and after Nadine is traumatised by Ayesha's death, Nadine is shown in a kinder light. She begins to open up to those around her and becomes more selfless when those she cares about lives' are threatened. She demonstrates a significant amount of bravery in the series, risking her own life to save Katie - who she bullied for years - as a way to redeem herself and because she genuinely actually cares about her (although she would never admit it.) She is flirty and passionate in love, and becomes distraught when Roy turns her down. Even so, she can still be blunt and sharp with her words, but is more respectful and polite when needs be. She matures a lot more throughout Hellrider. She can also be pretty emotional - although she's generally good at concealing her emotions.

She is shallow and materialistic and rich, liking materialistic things and likes to go on shopping sprees. She likes sports such as Netball and badminton, and her favourite subjects are chemistry, maths and drama. She is not very imaginative and creative, but she is intuitive, perceptive and logical. She can be very wise when she wants to be.

Nadine is ruled by Scorpio - the scorpion - and as such will possess such traits sometimes (although some of them more often) such as loyalty, passion, observeness, resourcefullness, dynamic, jealousy, obssessiveness, suspicion, manipulativeness and unyielding. At first, she tends to illustrate the bad traits of Scorpio as she is extremely deceiving, can be manipulative, sharp, spiteful, jealous and possessive. Despite being a Scorpio, she even demonstrated disloyalty as she was willing to leave her own friends behind to save her own skin. However, as she is shown in a kinder light in the end, it is revealed that it was all an act, as she actually demonsrates unwavering loyalty to Roy and Whitney more specifically, and she is shown to be resourceful and uses her good acting and deceiving skills for good. She is very passionate in her cause as well and is shown to be extremely loving towards those she cares about.

Abilities
Nadine was a very powerful and capable young witch - despite not being fully a witch - but due to the magical gene being dominant, she is a witch due to only needing one allele for that characteristic to be present. She is versatile and not an easily defeated opponent for lots of witches and wizards:

Familiar: Nadine could produce a familiar at the beginning of the series and transform into it (which takes an incredible amount of skill and experience - she even said that it took her years to be able to do it) and it started out as a Scorpion at the beginning. This was a reflection of her personality at the beginning - a level 1 Scorpio, a Scorpion, vengeful, jealous and spiteful. However, as the series progressed it changed to an Eagle, then eventually a phoenix as she had achieved inner peace and learnt wisdom and how to rise above difficulties in life. When she fell in love with Casper, however, and he at first rejected her feelings, it changed into a white lioness, similar to his. This is a sign of how she has progressed and that she has come a long way from what she once was. Her original familiar is also a reference to her star sign Scorpio.

Duelling: Nadine was a competent duellist with her wand after her witchery was revealed, as she was able to block and deflect spells from Whitney and killed Sophie in the final battle, a very high callibre witch. She often used spells in a calculating menace and it was said that she was unpredictable with whether she was going to attack or defend. She was very cautious and sneaky in her fighting style. She was able to freeze curse on Sophie in the final battle. Not only was she capable of duelling with a wand, she was also fairly okay with Clarent as a sword as well, able to wield her with elegance and skill.

Knives: Before her witch heritage was revealed, Nadine learnt to fight with knives and only used knives at the beginning of the series. It's later revealed she collects knives as a hobby, however, she wasn't sadistic with them. She sometimes even cut herself to relieve to pain in life. She was a competent knife thrower, able to throw daggers with extreme accuracy - her skill on par with Diabla's knife-throwing technique. She never really fought duels with a knife, although would carry one for extra protection sometimes.