Welp. Time to get out of the pool.

"C'mon Monty," Toby said, turning to his hippogriff (HIS hippogriff) again. "You heard the man. Time to get out and get all dry."

For a while, there was no movement. Just a super relaxed hippogriff squinting back at him, very obviously quite comfortable and not willing to move. Toby wondered about tagging on a 'pleeeeeeease?' to his statement, but just as he opened his mouth to do so there came a sloshing from beside him; Monty was standing up. Tobias gave a great smile, and gestured with his head for Monty to step on out, even did that weird tongue-clicking thing like when you're trying to persuade a pet to come closer and love you.

But Monty wasn't having any of it, was just stood that. With a teeny sigh, but still smiling pleasantly enough, Toby stepped closer again to give some cajoling feather ruffles to the hippogriff.

"C'mon Monty," the Hufflepuff said again, though quieter this time, in his secret-sharing voice. "After I comb you you'll get to go for a run. I know you'd like that." How did Toby know? He just diiiiiid. Hippogriff whisperer as well as fairy whisperer, obviously.

Maybe it was the feather ruffling, maybe it was the tone of Toby's voice, but Monty did indeed step forward out of the pool. Awesome.

"Brilliant, Monty. Thank you."

Now holding onto the comb, Toby spared a moment to stroke Monty's feathers again and assess how dry they were, before he began carefully going over alllllllllll the feathers. He was being painstakingly careful, trying to ensure that no feather was left unturned, and they were all obviously going in the right direction. Monty was quite a bit bigger than him, so it took rather a long time.

But eventually he was done; Monty's feathers (ALL of them) were combed through and smooth and this was one fancy schmancy looking hippogriff. Tobias was so tired by this point; he'd not been this active in a few weeks now, so it was a lot to suddenly be doing. He paused and stood by, taking a moment to regroup and watching the other students for the time being.

After a decent enough time standing around, which also served as providing Monty with more feather-drying time, Toby went around the hippogriff making extra sure it was totally dry. Finding that this was the case (after triple checking, because he wanted to be extra super duper 100% sure), Tobias reached up to stroke the feathers behind Monty's head again.

"Right, let's head on outside, yeah?"

Tobias took the return squawk to mean 'yeah sure, Tobes, let's do that, that sounds cool' and began to carefully and slowly navigate his way through the enclosure and out of the pen, leading the hippogriff. All the way he kept murmuring to Monty, and looking up to meet those orange eyes from time to time. Manners, y'know? Soon enough they were outside the pen, finding a space far enough away that they were slightly removed from the others, but still close enough to hear any instructions that Thompson might caught out. Right now though? Tobias was back to chatting away at Monty, who was loving the attention as Toby was stroking away at those feathers.