The beauty of keeping his head down on the desk was that Toby could remain oblivious to any looks or frowns or whatever that was directed his way. He missed the frown that Dakest directed at him, perhaps for the better, judging by his reaction to the frown in the patronus lesson? Never could really be sure with this one.

He remained that way for as long as he could, doing his best to process the information that came their way, but ultimately failing. Mostly it made him feel sad (more sad), because werewolves were humans, but also creatures (they had dual status as Beast and Being, he knew), and he hated the way they were being spoken about in this lesson. Rationally, he might have understood that it was a necessary topic, but Tobias was not a rational person, a lot of the time. Some of this stuff just... just affected his delicate Hufflepuff tendencies.

And then the instruction came, the one to get up and stand behind the desks. Toby didn't really want to, but he wanted to disobey a professor (uhh... again) even less. After a looooooooong pause... Toby finally brought his head up, though he kept his eyes down. He knew they'd be a dead giveaway, all red and puffy. But because of hayfever, y'know? That... that mid-winter hayfever. Totally.

Toby cleared his potions stuff away, avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone, and stood back behind the desk. When it transformed into a flailing dummy, he only stared at it through tired eyes, and with an impassive expression. That was how he remained as Dakest walked them through the next step, back to idly but halfheartedly twirling his wand through his fingers. Oh, it was time to start? Well. Okay then.

Flipping his wand into spell-casting position in his hand, Toby eyed the dummy for a little longer, almost mesmerised by the flapping limbs. It felt soothing to watch something so random and mindless when his own thoughts were getting all tangled and messy in his head. After a good minute, Toby blinked, remembered where he was, and quickly rubbed at his face to wake himself up a bit.

Right. So. What had Dakest said? The wand movement was a twist... and then a thrust towards the target. Toby eyed those nearby him for a moment, to make sure he was remembering that right, then looked back at the dummy. Saying nothing, he held up his wand, gave it a twist to the right, and a half-hearted shove forwards to the dummy. Nothing happened, but he didn't expect it to. Just practicing the wand movement, y'know? Now he needed to remember the incantation, which had already totally slipped his mind.

Toby stood where he was and listened to his classmates. They would be using the incantation too, after all. Forgetting it was no major problem; happened to Toby all the time. He just had to keep his ears open until someone jogged his memory.