Right, just the cleaning spell to sort of compliment all the manual work he'd been doing, and then he'd be done with this homework, though nothing was stopping him from coming back another time and checking on the armour, right?

Right.

"Scourgify," Tobias muttered, wand aimed at the section he'd been focused on cleaning, which was now scorch-mark free. He couldn't SEE any real difference, probably because he had just been cleaning right there. Muggle cleaning DID work, after all. What did happen, however, was that the pieces of lint left behind from the cloth sort of vanished from the stainless steel. Tobias smiled to himself and caused the polishing spell, just for good measure. "Excolo."

Once he'd given that part of the armour a good polish, Tobias lowered his wand again and looked back up at Ella, watching her finish off with that impervius spell whilst he considered what she said. "Good point. Last year I had loads of free time. But then I didn't do any extra reading. I suppose the closer you get to the big exams, the less time you have for things like exploring and stuff." And, with the size of the castle, Tobias was sure that there was barely anyone who'd explored the entire thing, even just the places students could go.

As Ella started closing her notebook and stuff, Tobias looked at the Gryffindor suit of armour again, kinda thoughtfully. Wouldn't help to copy Ella do the Impervius Charm on this one too, would it? It was a good idea after all.

"Impervius," Tobias cast, wand raised and pointed at the armour once more. There. Done.

With that, he moved from behind the suit of armour back round to the front of it, so he was beside Ella again, and picked up the bucket of rags. He smiled at what she said about the extra reading; he was doing it all to make sure he was well prepared in the future. As for the concentration... "I've never been any good at staying focused. That probably won't change, but the more time I spend on reading and studying... well... law of averages says I might end up focusing for about as long as everyone else." It just took a lot more time and effort than it might for a lot of other students.

Tobias looked at the Hufflepuff suit of armour that Ella had been working on, and gave a wide beam. "Good job, Ella!" he said brightly, bouncing on his toes. The younger Hufflepuff reholstered his wand into the holster that was strapped to the arm that held the bucket, before focusing back on the captain again. "You heading back to the common room now?"

If she was, they could go together, y'know? Company was always awesome.