................. Toby could only stare in abject horror as he watched the acromantulas DISINTEGRATE and DIE. It was awful... AWFUL. He thought the shields would just KEEP THEM AT BAY????? Not do THAT.

It was enough to make him all wibbly. And, in fact, it did. Wibbly and conflicting feelings threatened to engulf him. He didn't know how to make sense of the matter because KILLING THINGS WAS UNNECESSARY, but then... they'd TAKEN Truebridge and Noel! But... Toby still hadn't wanted the spiders to DIE. They could have incapacitated them without doing that. *wibble*

He very belatedly realised that people were talking in the greenhouses. It wasn't until he saw an adult figure in the corner of his eyes that Toby had even thought to look round and pull his earmuffs off. Everything seemed to be dying down now, the spiders were dead gone and Quigley was here to fix everything.

... And also, Toby could go ahead and put Mandy the mandrake, sole survivor of the mandrake massacre of '87, back into a pot. That seemed wise; the mandrake WAS still stunned, but Toby knew his spells sometimes had a habit of randomly wearing off. The entire situation felt bizarre and so so surreal, as the others started talking about what had happened while Toby went right on ahead and repotted his mandrake back into its pot, covering the thing with soil and then casting 'Finite' on it. It felt better to focus on that than on... on anything else. In fact, he was tempted to very aggressively ignore everything else and start tending to the plants instead, making sure they were... okay.

For now, though, Toby turned back to the rest of the group but stayed by his now re-potted mandrake, looking grim and staying resolutely silent.