(Gif description:/ Four camera shots. 1st) Magdalena Zalejska standing in an open field of grass, smiling; she throws a fist full of grass at the camera. 2nd) a shot of her arm and legs as she runs through a field of wheat, her hand grazing the crops as she passes by. 3rd) Magdalena Zalejska is sitting on the hood of a blue jeep. 4th) a shot of the same wheat field before the loop starts over /: end description)

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❝ If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.❞

─ Agatha Christie

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As the weeks drag on, Nina becomes something of an expert at isolating herself. She ducks out of the potions classroom everyday before Professor Slughorn insists she join his little popularity club (Nina despises social events even on a good day); despite her father's lame attempts at throwing her in detention every weekend, Nina manages to shake him off as well. It's a simple matter of giving him the cold shoulder. She doesn't attend his detentions. He doesn't care what she wants. Why should she give a damn about what he wants?

Malfoy is a bit more difficult to avoid, considering the forced allyship, but she manages. Most nights she leaves him to work on the cabinet alone, and when she's not staring into the Mirror of Erised, she's doing her homework out of nothing but pure spite, a burning desire to make her father feel guilty upon her success. Out of shere annoyance, Malfoy has given up on bothering her for assistance.

At least, this is what Nina thinks. But she's proven wrong the day of their first (and last) Hogsmeade trip of the year. It starts with the Trio (as per usual).

She's walking into the Great Hall for breakfast, silently cursing everything that dared to exist in her presence that morning. That's when she hears them. Potter and his friends are chatting loudly at the Gryffindor table as though no one can hear them (they're quite oblivious that way, Nina thinks).

"... and then there was another flash of light and I landed on the bed again!" Weasley is grinning wide, as if he's telling the greatest story ever told.

Nina frowns. She has an inkling of an idea what he's talking about, and she's not sure she finds it quite as amusing. Granger seems to be sharing her sentiments (well, she's always been the brightest of the three, Nina must admit).

"Was this spell, by any chance, another one from that potion book of yours?" Granger demands of Potter.

Nina bumps into a third year Hufflepuff who's trying to leave; she lets her books fall and scatter across the floor so she can eavesdrop. The Hufflepuff yelps and scurries away, apparently afraid Nina is going to hex them for something she herself has done. She ignores that.

"Always jump to the worst conclusions, don't you?" Potter says.

"Was it?"

"Well... yeah. But so what?"

Nina pauses in picking up her belongings for a moment. It's concerning that the boy wonder doesn't see the issue with trying out random spells on unsuspecting passersby. She's noticed this isn't a first offense. Potter has tried loads of her father's self-made spells already (once on Crabbe and twice on the poor caretaker Argus Filch). Those were just silly, childish spells (perhaps, from when her father had just been beginning his innovative phase and testing the waters, so to speak). Merely making toenails grow and mouths to get stuck together.

It's pure fortune that he hasn't stumbled upon the more dangerous ones yet. One spell in particular automatically pops into Nina's head. She doesn't want to think about what might happen if he uses that one on someone in the corridors.

Nina listens carefully, hoping Granger will talk some sense into the foolish boy, but Potter seems insistent on ignoring her reasoning. "It's not Ministry of Magic approved..." and "the Death Eaters use the same spell..." and "I'm starting to think this Prince character was a bit dodgy..." She even hears her own name dropped once,"Remember what Nina said about mad men?" All things the boys dismiss with, "It was just a laugh, Hermione!"

Nina hesitates in picking up her last book. It doesn't seem right to move on, not without making sure her father's stupid spells won't be causing anyone any trouble. But it's not as if she can just walk up to Potter and co. and start chatting them up, can she? Hell, Potter won't even listen to his friend on the matter, why would he entertain so much as a word of what Nina says to him?

"I just think it's very irresponsible to start performing spells when you don't even know what they're for, and stop talking about 'the Prince' as if it's his title, I bet it's just a stupid nickname, and it doesn't seem as though he was a very nice person to me!"

Nina wants to say, You have no idea... but she keeps her mouth shut as she stands slowly, mulling over the limited options. It's either jump in and tell them about the awful spells in her father's book or keep walking and pretend she doesn't know about them.

Potter still doesn't seem to be deterred.

"I don't see where you get that from," Potter says. "If he'd been a budding Death Eater he wouldn't have been boasting about being 'half-blood,' would he?"

"The Death Eaters can't all be pure-blood, there aren't enough pure-blood wizards left." Granger has a point. Nina hasn't met many other Death Eaters (just her father and the Malfoys, actually), but she's sure that most of them are of the 'Half-Blood' status. "I expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure. It's only Muggle-borns they hate, they'd be quite happy to let you and Ron join up."

There's an odd sensation in her gut at the insinuation muggle-borns can't be Death Eaters. In most cases it would be true enough, but Nina supposes she's a special case... She's suddenly quite aware of how long she's been standing around. Are people staring?

They know, don't they?

Nina tugs her sleeve down farther.

"There is no way they'd let me be a Death Eater!" Weasley says with indignance. A bit of sausage goes flying off the fork he's brandishing at Granger and almost hits Nina. She's fortunate enough to duck in time; so instead it hits a Hufflepuff boy (Nina thinks he's in their potions class) on the head. "My whole family are blood traitors! That's as bad as Muggle-borns to Death Eaters!"

"And they'd love to have me." Potter's voice is dripping with sarcasm. "We'd be best pals if they didn't keep trying to do me in."

The three of them giggle at his joke, somehow still possessing the ability to be light hearted, despite people being snatched up, taken who knows where, and murdered for little to no reason at all. For being born. And they're going to school, laughing and making jokes as if it's nothing. As if it's the least of their worries. Because here they have the luxury of tuning it out. At least, they do for a little while... Who knows how long it will last?

Nina thinks she might be sick.

She debates with herself what to do for a moment. Her body seems to have gotten itself stuck to the floor. She would have thought someone had cast a full body bind curse on her while she's been distracted, except, despite what her mind had been telling her moments before, no one is paying her any mind at all. Somehow, this offends her more than the gawking ever could. How dare they act like everything is normal! How dare they not care about what's happening in the world around them!

Nina finds herself wanting to punish someone for the lack of this school's compassion. Then, she catches her father's eye from across the room. Perfect. Let him suffer the way the innocent victims of his and his stupid cult have. Let him fester with the same rage Nina feels every waking moment since being forced into His ranks. Let him be punished for all the sins of everyone in this godforsaken school. He deserves it. Everything that's going to happen this year will be entirely his fault. His fault.

Because he won't lift a finger to stop it.

Without another thought, Nina marches over to the Slytherin table, drops her books on the table, and circles back around. She pushes her way onto the bench at the Gryffindor's table, making sure her father is watching her all the way. His eyes narrow with rage, now ignoring Professor Grace, who he'd been conversing with moments before. Good. Nina hopes it breaks him to see her sit right next to Potter and his friends.

The trio in question are staring at her, open mouthed. She grins and wiggles her fingers at them. "Hullo."

Potter's face immediately pulls into a scowl, and Nina is glad she hadn't tried befriending him. This is only confirmation of what she already knows: the Gryffindors will never, ever like or trust her. "What do you want?"

"At the mo?" Nina asks. "That." She points, with a satisfied smirk, up at the staff table. Her father is watching them like a hawk; he's brimming with rage.

Potter follows her gaze and then rounds back on her. "Oh, that's nice, piss him off so that he can abuse the Gryffindors some more."

Nina shrugs. This doesn't make the trio any happier, but she can't find it in her to give a damn at the moment. She snatches Potter's potions book from him. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

"Hey!" he snaps. "That's mine!"

"Technically it's not..." Nina mutters, retrieving a red ink pen from her pocket. She doesn't care much for the standard ink and quill, so she never uses them unless she's got to.

"Give it back!" Potter demands like a child.

"In a moment. I'm adding notes. If you read and take heed of them, you can easily avoid catastrophe." She doubts he will, but marking the Dark Arts spells make her feel a little better anyway.

Nina flips through the book, ignoring the glares from Potter and his friends as she crams her own words in the margins next to her father's. It's a good thing they both have small handwriting... "Now, where is... ah, ha! There it is!" She taps the book with her pen, drawing the trio's attention to what is perhaps the most dangerous spell in the entire book ── the one marked 'for enemies.'

"This one. Don't ever use this one. At least, if you're going to test it out, try it on some rotten fruit or something first, yeah?"

"Why? What's this one do?" Granger asks. Nina can tell she's the only one of the three who's taking her seriously. The boys will just ignore her simply because they don't like her, but Granger is smart enough to sense when someone is being earnest. It also helps that she's already skeptical of 'The Half-Blood Prince' anyway.

Nina hesitates. Her father is still watching them. She knows he's going to track her down and scold her for all of this later, but she doesn't care. Screw him. In any case, it's difficult to explain the spell in so many words; plus, she doubts Potter will take her seriously unless he sees it in action first.

Nina slips her wand from her sleeve and aims it at Weasley's toast. "Sectumsempra." The bread is destroyed in an instant ── cut into a million, tiny pieces so small one might have assumed Weasley had merely acquired a plate of crumbs.

The trio jumps back, startling a few surrounding people. Up at the staff table, her father's eyes narrow further still, no doubt wondering why she's showing a bunch of Gryffindors this spell in particular. Though, he must have noticed Potter using his spells already. The boy isn't that subtle about it.

"Blimey," Weasley mutters. He looks horrified, but not nearly as much as Potter. Granger scowls and folds her arms, sticking her nose in the air, seemingly seconds away from saying 'I told you so.'

Nina leans her elbow on the table, twirling her wand in her fingers. "Bet you're glad you didn't try that on your friends, eh?"

Potter ignores her, but she can see the panic in his eyes, the guilt of what would have happened if he'd tested Sectumsempra instead of Levicorpus that morning. Instead, he glares back at her, as if she's somehow the cause of this spell's existence. "How do you know about The Prince's spells?"

"I had the book for a brief stint," Nina shrugs. "And I know who he is."

"Wait. You what? Who ─"

Nina almost laughs at the way his eyes light up with the prospect of finding out who wrote those additions, even after discovering there are so many Dark spells in that book. "Oh, you'll kick yourself when you figure it out." This is almost congenial. "I'd listen to your girlfriend, Potter. Not simply because 'the Half-Blood Prince' is dodgy, but because he'll know if you keep using his spells. I doubt he'll find it as amusing as you seem to."

"Wait. He's alive? And here? In Hogwarts? How ─"

"He is not only at Hogwarts, Potter, but in this very room right now, possibly watching and listening to every word we speak."

The Gryffindors look around the Great Hall with a simultaneous motion, as if they'll be able to spot 'The Prince' somewhere in the crowd. "Where ─"

But Nina has already risen from the bench. She's making her way back to her own house table when she hears Weasley say, "She's lying, just trying to scare us to keep us from using the spells. She doesn't really know who The Prince is. I bet he's not even at Hogwarts."

Malfoy rounds on her the second she sits down. "What were you doing at the Gryffindor table?" He says 'Gryffindor' as if it's the nastiest word in the dictionary.

Nina picks up her fork. Evidently it is too much to ask to eat in peace. "It appears I'm color blind."

Malfoy eyes her with a skeptical look, as if he's worried she's going around telling people about the Dark Marks, the Death Eaters, and the Cabinet. As if she's that stupid. "Then what was ─"

"Why don't you mind your own fucking buisness for once in your goddamn life, eh, Malfoy?"

He stares at her for a moment. Nina glares back. He looks like crap. Bloodshot eyes from sleep deprivation. Disheveled hair. It looks as if he hasn't slept since the start of school term. If Nina remotely cared about his well being she might have been a bit concerned, but just as she's attempting to muster up some sympathy for him, the little twerp rolls his eyes and turns to Crabbe and Goyal, muttering something that sounds like it includes the words, "That time of the month."

Nina scowls and stabs him with her fork. At least, she attempts to, but, most regrettably, Malfoy manages to yank his hand out of the way with seconds to spare. She misses. This only serves to irritate both teenagers more. They glare at each other.

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Nina huffs and turns back to her breakfast with the smallest of smirks. The Pettigrew twins sometimes watch television from the future with the crystal ball they'd gotten from Professor Trewlaney (at least they had until they went off to wherever). Every now and again, Nina is invited. One American show in particular uses the lines 'jerk' and 'bitch' between two brothers to show bonding. The irony of unwittingly making a reference to the show is amusing, but the humor fades almost at once at the prospect of bonding with the likes of Draco Malfoy.

He grumbles something incomprehensible under his breath; Nina imagines a great deal of it is him cursing at her. "You need to go to Hogsmead," he says suddenly. "I'm expecting someone to bring me something."

Nina gives a short, humorless laugh. "What am I, your delivery girl? How is that my problem? Go get it yourself."

"I would, except I have detention with McGonagall, so I won't be going anywhere today." He glares at the head of Gryffindor, who's up at the staff table, chatting with Flitwick and Sprout.

"So? Turn in your homework, if you don't want teachers giving you detention."

"Shut up."

"Blow me."

"Nina, that's disgusting. People are eating!"

Nina tries to stab him again, but, once more, he moves his hand too fast. "Just meet this person another time, then. Or have them send the thing by owl."

"They can't send it by owl, it's for ─" He cuts himself off and gives a not so subtle glance at his friends, apparently only just remembering they're still with them and neither he nor Nina have filled them in on the details of their recent misadventures together. "You know what it's for."

Nina tugs on her sleeve.

She tries very hard to control herself, to not glance up at the staff table again, sure that if she does, she'll find a pair of bright, blue eyes staring back at her.

"Bollocks." Nina stands with such abruptness that she makes Goyal (and several other surrounding people) jump. "Maybe you should have thought things through a little more, then. I'm not going to do shit for you, Malfoy." She snatches her books off the table and storms out of the Great Hall. To her great annoyance, Malfoy follows.

"You're supposed to be doing this with me!" he says stubbornly. "And I think it's about time you start pulling your weight!"

Nina spins around so fast he has to take a few steps back to avoid running into her. "Perhaps, I'm the first person who's ever said this to you, but no. No, I'm not getting anything for you. No, I'm not helping you. I'm not doing any of it. It's not part of my plans in the slightest. So... no. Commit the word to memory, Malfoy, you'll likely be hearing it a lot from me if you intend to keep badgering me."

If looks could kill, the glare Malfoy gives her here would have slaughtered her. "Why must you Snapes make everything so difficult?"

She ignores the fact that he says her last name plural; ignores the fact that her father has been dragged into this conversation. Nina doesn't want to think about her father or else she might start raging again. "I know. It'd be obnoxious if it wasn't so charming." His glare intensifies, and Nina allows herself some small sense of satisfaction. "Why didn't you tell me about this stupid plan of yours earlier if you wanted my help?"

"I tried, Nina! You ignored me!"

"Oh, wah." She turns to leave again, but Malfoy grabs her arm. Nina whirls around, ready to hit him, but she stops when she sees the look on his face. It's full of vulnerability, a sort of desperation she's never before seen on her house mate's face. It catches her off guard.

"Nina, please."

Nina pulls her arm free and tries to keep up her cold demeanor, as if he hasn't just shattered it completely. He's probably faking, she reasons. Just playing games to get what he wants. "Begging is unbecoming."

He ignores that. "Please," he says again. "Just go get it, and then I'll leave you alone. I'll do the rest on my own."

"Oh, how I'd love to believe that..."

The truth is, Nina is afraid. This is a slippery slope. This could very well be the thing that sends her spiraling down a path she doesn't want to be on: the same path her father chose to take when he was her age. If she does retrieve whatever this thing is, she'll likely lose what little chance she still has of achieving her ambitions. Call her selfish, but it's not fair. Why should she have to give up her whole life because of something her father had done in his youth? Why should she be forced to live the life he wants to live?

"He'll kill them..." Malfoy mutters quietly, in case anyone is trying to listen in. It's not just the students that are nosy around the halls of Hogwarts. The ghosts and paintings can be quite the gossip as well; nine out of ten times, they're the reason drama spreads so quickly around the school.

It's this argument that makes her resolve begin to waver. Even if he is faking, even if he's trying to manipulate her, even if none of this is fair, she can't say no after that. Not unless she wants to prove she is exactly what everyone thinks she is: a terrible, awful, selfish, heartless monster.

"How am I supposed to even get this thing back on school grounds?" She's stalling, avoiding the inevitable. "Filch is checking everyone with a Secrecy Sensor upon entering and exiting the castle!"

"I... don't know," he mumbles.

The annoyance begins to bubble up again. "You don't know?"

"I'm making it up as I go along, alright? You haven't exactly been very helpful as of late. I had to do something to move things along!" Nina opens her mouth to retort, but he hurries along before they can start arguing again. "Just don't touch it. Wrap it up in your scarf or something. And... and you can take Crabbe and Goyal. They can make sure no one follows you."

"I'm assuming you've already asked them?" Malfoy doesn't answer. Nina scoffs. "Of course not. You say 'jump' and their only question is 'how high?' Disgusting, really."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Nina thinks the defensive tone in his voice is unwarranted, undeserved.

"The way you treat your friends, idiot."

"What are you talking about? I don't treat them like anything."

"Imagine that," Nina mutters. "They'll get tired of you ordering them around like a bunch of servants one of these days. Have you ever thought maybe they don't really want to be bossed around by you all the time? That maybe if you'd shut up and listen to someone else for a change they might be able to form their own opinions?"

He stays silent, which is all the confirmation that Nina needs. Her scowl deepens, her dislike for the boy in front of her growing exponentially. Then again, she shouldn't be surprised. Draco Malfoy has always been the worst. It was him who tried getting Fin's granddad fired three years in a row. "You're just awful."

"Yeah, well ─" He cuts himself off as Crabbe and Goyal catch up. At least, he seems to care enough to not let them know they're arguing about them, now. "What do you know, anyway? Just get the stupid thing, alright? The seller will meet you at The Three Broomsticks."

"I thought all the dodgy people met up at Hogs Head."

"Just meet them there, alright?"

For a moment, Nina contemplates hexing him and walking away, just out of sheer spite. She decides that's not very Slytherin like, in the end; instead, she shoves her books into Malfoys arms. He stumbles back, not expecting this. "Since we're doing stuff for each other, you can carry those back to the common room for me." Nina gives the biggest, most cunning smile she can manage when Malfoy's face contorts with rage and annoyance.

"Fine," he spits out through gritted teeth. Nina smirks as he frowns down at the titles with distaste. "Who are these people, anyway? Agatha Christie? Emily Bontë? Jules Verne? I've never heard of any of them." His tone suggests, if he hasn't heard of them, then they must not exist. As if Nina has just created a bunch of false titles with fake names to make herself seem smarter and better read.

Nina almost laughs. "You won't have. They're muggle writers."

Malfoy drops the books faster than Nina has ever seen him do anything before, as if the books have spontaneously caught invisible fire and have burned him. Crabbe and Goyal take uneasy steps back away from the books, apparently fearing the invisible book fire as well.

Nina smirks. "What? You see a spider or something?"

Malfoy is glaring at her again, as if this is some sort of betrayal, as if they were friends to begin with. "Why do you have muggle books?" And, of course, the word 'muggle' is spat with even more anomosity than he'd used when saying 'Gryffindor' earlier.

Nina shrugs, "I prefer books that don't scream back at me."

He shakes his head, looking positively disgusted. "You are a mad woman, Nina Snape."

"And you, Draco Malfoy, are a diva."

"I'm not touching those again."

"Well, it's a good thing Professor Flitwick taught us a levitation spell in first year, then, isn't it?"

That's where she leaves him, in the middle of the corridor, complaining about her and her books to Crabbe and Goyal, as the rest of the student body exits the Great Hall and files towards the big oak doors at the entrance hall.