Benzi had been on his way to see Professor Dakest. He'd taken a few weeks to learn a bit more about him before he went to see him, just to see who he was dealing with. An OWL back from his mother later, Benzi had discovered that Sabel Dakest was in fact an Auror, and now he was here.

He'd jumped for joy and scared half the owls in the owlery, then ran to the common room to think of how to tackle this.

So, armed with an impending sense of doom and embarrassment over his OWL - it was REALLY humiliating and made him seem stupid given what he wanted to be when he grew up - Benzi had made his way to the DADA classroom, but a door marked "Practice Hall" had caught his attention. Eyeing the open waiting area door, Benz figured it wouldn't hurt to peek. He'd walked in, only to see ANOTHER door which caused his face to split into a wide grin.

Well, hello.

Staring at the equipment in wonder, Benzi went over to examine all the different sections of the obstacle, rather unable to believe all of this was here and at their disposal. Then he glanced at his watch. If he replaced this with the run he'd planned on going on later he could squeeze an hour and a half in here, at least. With warmups and stuff that was good workout. And this way perhaps he'd be able to impress Professor Dakest in the lessons before talking to him. You know, make up for his OWL result.

Changing quickly into the sports gear he'd packed in his bag, he dumped his things by the door and walked over to the beginning of the obstacle, wand firmly in his hand and jumping from foot to foot to get his heart rate up. Taking a deep breath, he began.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was not Toby's best subject. It was far from it, in fact, even though he'd somehow manage a high OWL grade), but he sometimes liked to go to the duelling arena in recent years and take out his emotions on the dummies under the guise of practicing the Bombarda and Incendio spells. Today, though, when he'd finally turned up at the practice room to see if he could do just that (emotions were just a great big pile of 'WHY'), Toby had spotted the other door. Natural curiosity had taken over, and now here he was.

His eyes had gone wide as he took in the splendor that was the obstacle course. Aside from running and maybe swimming and all that, they didn't get much in the way of physical exercise at Hogwarts anymore, not without using the Room of Requirement creatively. So stumbling on THIS was like... striking gold. Toby totally forgot it was a DADA thing, and saw only the chance to run around and burn off some energy. He even managed to forget some of his moodiness for a moment.

But there was someone else here, too. Someone who Toby hadn't noticed at first, taken as he was with all the equipment in here. But THEN he realised something ELSE. He totally knew that guy.

"Hey Benzi," Toby called across to the Ravenclaw boy who'd already started on the course, as he wandered over to the start point of the course Benzi was doing (or what looked like it could be a start point), still dressed in his uniform. No time to get changed, he needed to run. To let off STEAM. And there was a lot of steam that needed letting off. Without getting his wand out (or even questioning why Benzi had his own), Toby went ahead and started on the course too, holding nothing back. For a small, unassuming guy, he was surprisingly athletic. All the Quidditch training, y'know.

Other than his bed and the common room, Benzi had found he spent more time in here than anywhere else. It had become routine. Either he went jogging, or he came here, and then some days he did both. Thank Merlin for their relatively easy going sixth year timetable. At first he'd done the course just for the sake of beating it. Now he did it because, with everything else happening in his life, it was the one thing he knew he could count on to be predictably unpredictable.

Yay for obstacle courses.

Just about to start on those ropes for the second time today, Benzi turned at the sound of someone else entering the room. Weird, no one ever came in here. "Hey Toby," he nodded to the boy, watching him curiously as he took in the course and grinning when he saw the older - though much shorter - boy walk right over to the start.

Okay perhaps he could take a break and watch. Jumping off the raised platform with the ladders, Benzi grabbed a towel and wiped his face. He watched Toby as he ran through the course, both surprised and impressed by his performance. But, uh- "Toby mate you might want to get your wand out things are gonna jump at you soon," learn from the experienced, Toby. He'd almost had a heart attack the first time.

Lalala, running running running. Trying to scale the walls was Toby's favourite part, so far. Even though he was kinda short, as long as he built up enough speed and bounce, he could sort of jump and run halfway up. It was all about momentum. If there was one thing Tobias had... it was a lot of momentum.

He scaled one such wall, allowing himself to simply roll over and flop off the other side, hitting the deck in an ungraceful heap. After pushing himself up, he leapt for the monkey bars, lifting his legs up so he didn't sway as he quickly made his way over. Toby dropped back down to the floor on the other side and was just running down an empty stretch of the course when he heard Benzi's warning.

"Huh?" Toby replied, still running even as he looked around. "My wand? What thi-"

FSHWOOOOM! *THWAP* "EEP."

Toby let out a high-pitched squeal of surprise and immediately fell flat on his face. SOMETHING, he didn't know WHAT it was, but it had felt almost like a Quaffle or maybe a lightweight bludger or SOMETHING, had come out of nowhere and whacked him right in the head as he looked at Benzi. It had hurt, yes, but it was the shock and the loss of balance that had sent Toby to the floor.

There was a moment of silence before...

"Oh. I see what you mean."

.......

Well. Seeing as he was down here, may as well army crawl to the other side. Or... do the closest thing to an army crawl that he could manage. Aka, use his hands to drag himself across the floor. Still not getting his wand out, 'cause he was ridiculous like that. He'd not even checked to see if there was anything else headed for his pretty little head.

Benzi wondered if he should pull out his own wand and help Toby. Or tell him to keep his eyes on where he was running and not look back at him. But before he could come to a decision, the soft ball had already done its thing and sent Toby tumbling to the floor.

Specifically at that part Benzi had ducked at first because he wasn't sure if making the ball explode was allowed, but then reflex had taken over and he'd blown it into non existence around November, finding the course even COOLER after that because it had just made another ball. Not that the ball always came at him at that specific point, but it was always around this stretch of the course.

Anyways.

Jogging lightly over to where Toby had fallen, he couldn't help but snort at the awkward army crawl thing the seventh year was doing. And still without his wand. Oh Toby. "There's a bit of crawling in the next section I'd recom-" a rumbling sound caught his attention and he looked up to see a very solid looking wall had sprung into existence not a metre from them.

"Reducto!" Benzi cast quickly, watching as the spell blasted a hole through the wall. Right. "So yeah. Wand," he said, grinning down at Toby.

He liked making things explode.

Toby heard footsteps approach him and reasonably deduced that Benzi was coming over. He kept crawling, mainly 'cause it was fun, but stopped and squinted up at the sixth year when he arrived.

"Hi."

Then Benzi was talking and Toby WAS actually listening and paying attention, and just about to push himself up to his feet when-

Boom. Reducto happened.

Toby stood at last, brushing off his now-dirty and very rumpled uniform, eyeing the hole in the wall with an impressed look, and then looking back at Benzi. "Nice," he said, finally taking his wand out and twirling it between his fingers. "Y'know. Blowing things up was what got me through my Defence Against the Dark Arts OWL. I approve of your methods." He reached up and clapped him on the shoulder with his free hand. "Run the course with me?"