Temporary Setbacks
Rumors spread fairly quickly.
Maybe it was because of how close students at Hogwarts are, given someone told their friends, who has friends in another house, who has a brother in another, so on and so forth... Or because of the very much loud explosion coming from the Ravenclaw dormitory tower.
The Ravenclaws were forced to sleep in the common room while it was repaired and the Gryffindors, who were close to them, heard it loud and clear. Heck, even the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs heard it from the dungeons.
The perpetrator?
One Hamato Donatello.
It's not entirely his fault. No, it was probably the combined stress of school (Nah, school was easy) his insomnia and the intense urge to get this thing over and done with so his brother can hear again.
It wasn't entirely his fault that the prototype electrical flashlight he was working on exploded on his face.
He just needed time to perfect it. He needs to solve the theories he has conducted, with so little time and so little knowledge of the topic.
Magic was a fascinating and insufferable thing to him. Science was much easier to understand. It has rules. Magic? It was loose at best, wild at worse. It was hard to study something that was hardly ever explained.
Like... Where did magic come from? How did humans gain it? Is it all around them like the air they breath in? Was it possible to harness it in some other way... Say substitute a wand with something that has a more narrow type of usage?
His little side of the dorm was wrecked, his one month of hardwork setback for weeks, his important research... Blown to smithereens...
What's worse is the fact that everyone in Ravenclaw hated him.
Maybe because he's somewhat smarter in some capacity, maybe because he was questioning and poking at holes and inconsistencies of commom beliefs, maybe it's because of his constant effort of combining magic and manmade technologies.
They absolutely despised him, and the explosion in the Ravenclaw dormitories was the last straw.
Donnie trudges into the Great Hall fir breakfast, stumbling and looking a bit fidgety. His usual place was at the end of the Ravenclaw table every breakfast time, in front of him was steaming coffee with a bunch of papers strewn all around. Leonardo would usually visit him, but never sit down, and would go to the end of the Hufflepuff table to meet up with Michelangelo.
All four brothers can be seen eating together during dinner time.
This time, he joined Leo and Mikey at the Hufflepuff table, his hands lacking the rolls of papers and books.
The two brothers warmly invited him over, making him smile just a tiny bit, but he still looked like he was down in the dumps.
"What's up with him?" Ron asks from his position next to Harry. The two boys were watching the scene, talking about what the explosion was, since no one from the Ravenclaw table wanted to say a thing. "He looks... Down in the dumps."
"You reckon it's because of the explosion yesterday?" Harry offers. "He is a Ravenclaw, maybe he got affected by it?"
Hermione was giving them a nasty side eye. She honestly felt bad for Donnie she has a bit of a clue as to what happened.
The two continued to converse in whispers, with the two facing away from Raph just in case he was looking.
Suddenly, something white was sent flying toward the Gryffindor table, missing Ron's ear by inches and headed straight to Raphael.
To their shock, Raph caught it inbetween his fingers and never did once look up from his meal.
Harry and Ron turned to look at it, the former recognising what it was. It's an origami ninja stars, he knows how to make one of those out of boredom, copying how other kids folded the paper, but that particular paper star looked sharp, enough to cause a paper cut.
The people around them gaped, they all stopped what they were doing to stare at Raph. The others noticed Mikey had this little mischievous, fox like smile on his face before continuing his loud conversation with Leo.
"What was that?!" Ron exclaimed.
Raph didn't give a hint that he noticed anyone talking to him. He shoved the last bit of his sandwhich in his mouth before opening the paper ninja star. Ron and Harry craned their necks a but to see what was inside but he crumpled and pocketed it immediately. He stood up, wiping his hands on his robes before strolling towards the end of the Hufflepuff table to join his brothers, all of them welcoming him with a smile.
"Is no one going to mention how he caught that while he wasn't looking?" Semus pipes.
It was a bizarre interaction.
The Weasley twins managed to weasle information out of their older brother, Percy the Prefect. According to his "friend" Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw, Donnie had made a huge explosion in the dormitories resulting with the first years having to sleep in the commom room for the time being while it's being repaired. The Hamato lost 20 points (he earned a lot more for the house than that) because of it, all his tech was confiscated by Professor Snape (who looked very much disappointed). They found out what Donnie was doing, it was a very dangerous experiment revolving around trying to get muggle electronics to work in Hogwarts.
Of course this was a big security threat, they can't have phones, or else they'll be found. If Donnie manages to make phones work, then every muggleborn kid would want to have one too, it was against the statue of secrecy.
He pleaded not to let them take his stuff, saying he only did it for his brother, who has a hearing aid that relied on electricity, something that doesn't work in Hogwarts.
Most of the teachers were Purebloods so he had no choice but to give up the project.
"I feel bad for him." Neville says. "I always see him in the library researching and writing notes... I thought he's just a workaholic, turns out he was trying to figure out how to get Raphael's hearing aids to work independently without having the magic around school to blow up his ears."
Harry winces. He doesn't want to know what would happen to Raph id he accidentally turned his hearing aids on while it's in his ears. It's good that he doesn't wear them.
"That's a bummer." Ron says. "Why would he even need that stuff to hear? Magic can fix everything."
"Not everything." Hermione pops out of nowhere, she was sitting close to hear their conversation. The boys and the older second year weasleys turned to look at her as she placed her book down. "Can you fix Harry's eyesight?"
The purebloods and half bloods of the group opened and closed their mouths like a fish, trying to think of am answer.
"No magical opthalmologist?" Hermione asked.
"What even is that..." Ron mutters under his breath.
"It's a doctor for the eyes." Dean answers.
"I think my mum mentioned they have something like that... There are spells to clear the eyes but it's not really permanent."
"Exactly." Hermione closes her book. "If magic is all powerful as they say, Harry wouldn't have to walk around practically blind with his glasses, which, mind you, is a muggle invention. Hearing aids are a muggle invention for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Not everything can be solved by magic, now, can it?"
Ron sags in his seat a bit. He has to admit, Hermione was right. Magic can do wonderous things but it's sometimes useless. It is complicated and simple at the same time and would practically collapse if you put a little muggle logic into things.
"Donnatello is one smart cookie, isn't he?" Fred says. "I heard from one of the eagles that the thing you muggles use... The thing that is kind of like the lumos spell? Yeah, he managed to make it light up without batteries... It did blow up though."
"How do you know what a battery is?" Dean asks, he knows his friends can be a bit clueless about muggle stuff, and from what he heard, Weasleys are a long line of pureblood families.
"Dad collects them." Ron says. "He's an enthusiast." He says, a bit proudly.
"So this means if Donnatello can't work on whatever he's doing, Raphael would be stuck not hearing again?" Harry asks. Hermione gives a short stiff nod. "That sucks."
"Yeah it does."
The group jumps in their seats.
Raph stood behind all of them, arms crossed and with his signiture scowl on his face.
"How— How did you even end up there?! We didn't hear a thing!" George shouts.
Raph looked a bit smug as he flashes them a smirk. "I may not hear things too well but i know how to keep quiet." He then looks over to Hermione. "The nerd wants to talk to you tomorrow at lunch, he said he wants another perspective on his project."
Raph made a move to walk towards his shared room when Harry, as gently as he can, caught and tugged on his robes, making him look back.
"He's still trying?" He asks.
"Oh, of course he is." Raph says, almost amused. "He'll obsess over this until he figures it out. Don't worry, he found a place where no one would figure out he was still doing it. Don's not the 'goody two shoes' that's Leo."
He walks way without another word.
"His family is very interesting." Ron can't help but say.
"I have a feeling they're hiding a lot of things." Harry says.