Toby was back to squinting at those cobwebs again, ready to leap up out of his seat and throw himself over Sophie and Zander and off to safety should any spiders suddenly appear. All seemed to be fine so far, though, which was something.

Once the lesson started, Toby managed to drag his gaze away and look at Tanner instead. Okay, yes, time to find out how these two lessons were about to interconnect, yes?

Not muggle mathematics then, thank Merlin. Toby simply would not have survived a lesson that was purely maths, though he hadn't actually speculated that that might be the topic until Tanner herself said it was wrong. But yeah, anyway... reducing. That was the kind of maths Toby could do sometimes. He wrote the number (or was it four smaller numbers, he wondered? No, Toby, it was one number) down on his parchment, double-checked he wrote it right, then got to work.



Toby checked through his answers again, knowing that this class was the one where he was most likely to make careless mistakes at all, but it was exactly the same the second time round. He went over the lines that made up the little '8' a couple more times, making the number stand out, bold and proud, before he looked up again with a suddenly curious expression. He raised his hand. "How come we're reducing this number, Professor? Is it just random, or...?" Just curious, y'know.