Not a Gryffindor - a Harry Potter fan fiction

Chapter 4

This chapter is dedicated to @colourmadness for keeping me motivated throughout the short while I've been writing this!!! :) She's seriously awesome, so follow her if you haven't already!
Btw sorry I'm moving through Zara's Hogwarts years so fast, I just need her to be at least in her third year to be able to pull off what she's going to! :)

Three years later

I smiled to myself as my eyes drifted open. I had been, like in my first year, staying at Malfoy Manor with my second cousins Tom and Aruna for the holidays.

At the end of my second year, I had decided that I might as well trial staying with my family. Things were extremely awkward, since I hadn't seen them since I started Hogwarts and they had been so predijuced against me. I had often made desperate excuses to get out of the house and somewhere, anywhere else.

I rolled out of the luxorious queen sized bed. I loved Malfoy Manor. Well, except for the living room. It's nice and all, but in my opinion, it still had a dark feeling to it from the day Hermione had been tortured by my best friend's grandmother. After something like that's happened, it's not easy to clear up the foreboding atmosphere.

After the war, the Malfoys closed off the dungeons and generally made their Manor a much nicer place.

After having showered, dressed and packed up the last few items scattered around my room, I headed through the maze of hallways to the dining room for breakfast. Aunt Rose (she was not technically my aunt, more like my second aunt or something like that, but she had told me not to bother with all the messy technical details) was already in there, hovering around one of the dark oak chairs. She beamed at me when I entered.

"Good morning Zara, I hope you slept well. You may have breakfast now if you wish, but we are apparating to King's Cross, so you still have a few hours to prepare yourself so you may want to eat a bit later.' She said.

I smiled and told her that I was happy to have breakfast now, and so the Malfoys' house elf brought me a plate stacked with strange, thin, golden things. I looked up in surprise and Aunt Rose laughed at my expression.

"They're called pancakes," she explained. "You put toppings on them, for example, butter or syrup. I found the recipe in one of my grandmother's cookbooks."

I nodded slowly, intrigued. Muggles certainly were strange. But after tasting them I found that muggles also had really nice food! After breakfast, I finished getting ready and waited eagerly by the door.

I couldn't wait to see Carrie again. It turned out that we had a lot in common. After the Room of Requirement incident, we became close friends, but the thought of what happened in there still makes me cringe:

I had been listening in on a conversation between a woman named Alyssa and a man called Salazar. In my curiousity, I forgot about being subtle, tripped over a book, and landed with a loud bump on the hard wooden floor.

Carrie's head snapped up. She began to stride towards me. Then she swooped down and whipped off my Cloak.

"Well well well," she said evilly. "What have we here?"

"I can explain-" I began nervously.

"Oh no need, no need." She said sweetly. "You can go back to your spying now. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'm afraid my stupid parents are a bit too loud."

"Your parents?"

"Yes that's right. Alyssa and Salazar Lestrange, Voldemort's only remaining followers and unfortunately, my parents."

"Look Carrie, I'm sorry. I was just studying, I didn't mean-"

"No it is I who should be apologising, but if you really feel bad, to make it up to me, can I please just practise this spell on you?" She asked, smiling evilly.