The Foreigner {Fred Weasley x OC}

1.

Loud beeping shakes me out of my sleep so badly that I fall off my bed with a 'thud'. Groaning, I get into a sitting position and look around the room to assess the situation. The annoying screeching sound is obviously coming from our smoke detectors placed around the house.

I stand up and make my way through my cluttered and dark room and reach for the door handle, but as my hand makes contact I instantly pull away as searing pain spreads across my palm. I can't see well, but it's obvious that my hand is blistered and burnt. I feel around the floor of my room with my feet in order to find something to help me open the door. Eventually, my foot touches something soft, it must be my clothes from yesterday that I had left on the floor after taking them off. Picking up what I assume to be a shirt, I walk cautiously over to the door - the beeping still ringing in my ears - I fold the shirt over a couple of times and place it on the handle, turning it quickly.

Plumes of dark smoke come bellowing into my bedroom and I'm thrown into a fit of coughs, "Mom! Dad!" I call out as I lower myself to the floor to avoid the majority of the smoke. No voices reply and when I crawl into the hallway is when I see the extent of the issue. The smoke clears from my vision and the huge flames that have filled up all the way to the top floor are now making their way to my bedroom doorway. I fall back with a small yelp as some of the large embers land on and burn my face.

I get off the floor, covering my mouth with my pyjama shirt in order to avoid inhaling too much smoke. I clamber over my bed and pull the curtains back from my window. I unlatch the window as quickly as I can and I swing it open, luckily there is a small hangover that covers my porch that I can climb down onto. I jump back down off of my bed and start throwing some clothes in a small backpack that was hanging on my wall.

There is a strong heat pressing onto my back. The fire had entered my bedroom. I trip on my feet as I try to move away from it and I fall onto the floor. The fire looms over my head and when I think that it's going to swallow me whole, it stops moving. Almost as if it has hit an invisible wall, the fire can't come any closer to me.

I scramble to my feet, chucking the bag out of the window from where I stand and with one glance back to my room, which is now engulfed in flames, I climb out the window.

From the hangover, I am able to lower myself down onto the porch below. I drop down from the height and grab my bag, taking several steps back from my house. The entire place is in flames and several of the windows have broken from the heat. I stare and watch my bedroom window start to fill with fire.

The beeping of our smoke detectors soon mixes in with the sirens of the fire department. I am moved further away from the house by firefighters, but I still don't have the courage to look away from it, hoping somehow that my parents will come running out of the smoke-filled doorway. But... They don't.

"Can you tell me how this fire started?"

"I don't know," I mumble in response to one of the many questions I have been asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see several concerned faces of my neighbours as they watch me, whispering to each other.

Another man approaches me and just when I think he's going to ask me another question about the fire he says, "Do you know what you did tonight?"

"Saved myself from a burning house," I murmur still keeping eye contact with the smoke in the front doorway.

"I wish I could say that was all you did." The man says sternly. As he says these strange words I finally break my eyes away from the fire and look at the man. He's dressed very formally. But his hair is unkempt and when his face catches the light I swear I see a couple of deep scars that are pale in comparison to his dark skin. One might think that he works for the press, but from the way he looks and the way he seems to be giving everyone around us strange glances, I don't believe he is.