Soon enough, Tobias was at the student gardens. He'd flipped through his potions book briefly to see if there were any easily obtainable ingredients, which of course there were. Plenty. It was just a case of how lucky he'd be in finding them.

An obvious one that Tobias had spotted was ginger, and he had memories, now tainted with homesickness, of his mother giving him gingerbread when he had a stomach upset, and then any other time he was ill. He had warm associations with smell and taste of gingerbread now, so it seemed perfect when he saw it in the potions book.

His first thought had been to retrieve it from the kitchens, but given that the food they'd been fed so far was bland and basically icky, he doubted he'd find any there.

So here he was, uncertainly rummaging around in the dirt for the root he'd seen depicted in his book. Tobias had had to stop off at his dormitory to grab his Herbology things, particularly his gloves (just in case) so he didn't have much time. He also wasn't sure if he was allowed to just take anything from here, but Tobias had heard a few other students talking about coming to get things from the student garden, so figured it must be fine. Still, he wanted to be out of there as soon as possible.

Before too long, he'd encountered the familiar looking root, albeit a very small one, and gave it a slight sniff. The smell of the earth was stronger than anything, but Tobias was confident that it looked exactly the way it was meant to as described in the book, so he stood and brushed the dirt from his knees.

As he was about to take his leave, another plant caught his eye, and this one was something Tobias was SURE would be of use, and he recognised it anywhere. In fact, it was something else that reminded him of home: lavender. Tobias' mother grew loads of it, and more than once she'd joked about giving him a sprig to carry around and sniff so he would calm down. Brilliant.

Without thinking about it a second longer, Tobias snagged a couple of sprigs and hightailed it out of there.