Ooh. Ooh. OOH. TOBY KNEW THAT, HE COULD HELP. The Hufflepuff quickly raised his hand and provided what he thought might be the answer, looking between Airey and Margo, the student he'd been addressing.

"An expansion, Professor. Less of a bang and more of a-" here he used his hands to sort of demonstrate something rapidly expanding, as though he had hold of a balloon that was being inflated "-whooooooosh, I suppose." His hands kept doing the expanding thing, on account of how the universe was still expanding, until his arms could spread no wider. Uh-huh. Yep. Whoosh.

....................

Notes notes notes at all these answers. Or, well, he tried, at least. But there were only so many notes you could make before it got easier to just sit and listen to what was being said rather than risk forgetting it because you were writing something said five minutes ago. Soph took good notes; he'd borrow those later.

Of course, Toby was totally prepared for the desk jumping. Every answer he GAVE was in the hopes that it would be good enough for Airey to leap on up there. And he knew the signs, so quickly scooted his parchment and in out the way, grinning all the while because it meant he had a good answer. A good OBSERVATION. Aw yis.

That was pretty cool, though, and Toby peeked around Airey to get a better look at those classroom-celestial objects, which he now knew to be the Earth and a forming Moon, and which he now kept in mind as he observed, right up until that next question. Or series of questions.

At which point he raised his hand again, the one holding the spongy bit of Moon.

"I reckon... the Earth would be different without the Moon, obviously. Life would be different, 'cause it'd change a whole bunch of stuff, like people said. Tides and light and shorter days and all, but I think we'd mostly adjust. Though I wonder how life would have evolved if there'd been no Moon in the first place, 'cause I'm sure there'd still be life here." That was a very longwinded way of Toby saying that he didn't know, and was theorising instead. "If we didn't have the moon then there probably wouldn't be werewolves, or perhaps there would be a different sort of condition instead. OH, that reminds me, we wouldn't have certain words either, would we, if the Moon never turned up? Wolves would have different Latin names and the word 'lunatic' wouldn't exist and there would be no-one named Luna." It seemed for a split second that Toby was done talking then, BUT ALAS. "Professor Airey, does the Moon help Earth when it comes to asteroids and stuff? Maybe help pull them off course with its own gravity? If so, that wouldn't happen if it wasn't there."

Okay, so it was slightly redundant to tack that on the end there, but #yolo.