The dust was slowly settling and everyone heard faint groans coming from inside it.
Then they heard a swish from within the fog and found it to rapidly clear.
It seemed as if there was still someone alive inside the fog.
The dust began to clear and everyone looked at the happy scene inside it.
"Louisa!" Jacob shouted forcing Louisa to look in his direction.
She pushed herself off the ground and ran towards Jacob in a hurry.
"Jacob!!!" Louisa had a happy smile on her face as she shouted his name.
Clearly, she was happy he was alive.
But something was weird.
Why wasn't Jacob getting up from the floor, why wasn't he moving? Was he just tired?
The dust cleared further and everyone saw what Louisa saw.
Her movements faltered at first but then they immediately sped up in panic.
"JACOB!!!!!!"
Jacob had become trapped under the very same boulder that was above Louisa a few seconds earlier. His legs were squished into a meat paste by the boulder and Louisa ran up to him with tears in her eyes.
Everyone realised in that moment what had happened.
After using Bombarda Maxima, Jacob had probably pushed Louisa out of the way and become trapped under it himself.
"Jacob!! Let me help you out!!! Don't move!!! Your legs can still be salvaged!!" Louisa said reminding everyone just how powerful the medical expertise of wizards was.
Jacob just gave her a self pitying stare and then spoke in a soft mumble.
"It isn't poss…"
"What!?" Louisa asked leaning closer to him to listen to what he was saying.
"It won't be possible to heal my legs anymore Louisa.", Jacob said with a sad sigh.
"But why!?" Louisa grew confused and worried, checking if Jacob had sustained a more serious life-threatening injury.
"At the last moment, when I used the Bombarda Maxima curse on him, he used the Fiendfyre spell on me. I had to allow my legs to be crushed by the rock to stop the spell from consuming my body."
Jacob hadn't said anything further, but Louisa and everyone in the audience knew what that meant.
Modern Medi witches couldn't cure injuries from Fiendfyre.
"No way…" Louisa collapsed onto her knees with her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish the entire time.
"I'm sorry Louisa, I don't think I can hold you to our promise for a dance.", Jacob said with a soft sigh causing Louisa to break into tears and begin to cry and wail in Jacob's arms as he did his best to comfort her.
The spotlight turned off again and everyone became slightly depressed wondering if the play had ended here.
'No way right? This is not the end right?' Several students thought at the same time.
The spotlight turned on again and this time it showed Jacob sitting in a wheelchair with Louisa pushing him through a garden as they slowly made their way through.
Both Louisa and Jacob had a bright smile on their faces and not once did either complain about their roles.
They walked through the park where several children were playing and even ended up on a cliff from where they watched the sunset for a bit.
While returning, however, they spotted a silly little girl dancing under the stars while singing to herself.
She looked pretty, like the moon dancing under the stars, as she moved gracefully and elegantly through the field of flowers around her.
Her moves were random and didn't have much choreography, yet the girl looked beautifully free while she danced. She appeared to be gliding through the field like a fairy moving from one flower to the other, waiting to collect its nectar.
Everyone, including Jacob, heard Louisa stifle her sobs at that moment as she forcefully turned around from the girl, breaking the audience's immersion in her performance while dragging Jacob back to their house.
That night, Louisa cried for a long while in bed and eventually fell asleep sometime during the morning.
It was only after she fell asleep that Jacob woke up and sat up in the bed with difficulty.
Sullivan's last words echoed in his mind, "Burden."
'Aren't I a burden to her right now?' Jacob thought.
Then looking at her for a long while, Jacob seemed to have decided something as a sharp glimmer showed in his eyes.
From that night every day, Louisa walked with Jacob to the cliff and watched the sunset with him, but she always changed their path while returning so that they wouldn't come across the girl dancing ever again.
Everyone including the audience could see the thought was slowly eating Louisa up.
Whenever she talked with Jacob they saw how her eyes contained guilt as if she was the one responsible for his burdens, not even him telling her that he was alright and didn't mind being unable to walk much since he got to spend more time with her changed her mind.
She appeared to be slowly spiralling.
But every day after Louisa fell asleep, Jacob would sneakily use his wand to push himself out of bed and move out of the room to do something no one could see just yet.
'What is he doing?' the students wondered.
'Is he also feeling sad like Louisa?'
'Perhaps he might be going out to vent out his frustrations?'
Everyone concluded something similar, they all thought the sadness was getting to Jacob too, and they were worried he would do something drastic or make an irrational decision.
Some of the audience members were even going as far as to curse both Hermione and Loki in their minds for making such a terrible play.
Everyone was unhappy.
Finally, one fine day when Louisa and Jacob went to the cliff to watch the sunset Jacob said something that startled everyone.
"Louisa, why don't we go the way the little girl danced last time?"
Louisa trembled, her lips quivered and goosebumps appeared on her arms. Her head spiralled into despair as she began to hyperventilate, but Jacob's calm and steady voice brought her out of her thoughts.
He simply said, "Let's go."
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A/N : Thank you for reading! We crossed two hundred powerstones so there will be an extra chapter today!!! Let's Goooooo!!!
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