One crawling nth at a time, the sun rises over Wiltshire. With luck, the local roosters won't wake to find any toads sitting on their hens' eggs. (That's how basilisks are born, after all.)
In Wiltshire wizardry, at least, there is no poultry; local law forbids it, for respect of the rather bulging toad population. Plus, a lot of wizards and witches here have toads as pets/familiars. Hence, it's also against local wizarding law to gig toads. The same law, sadly, applies to frogs.
Upland fowl hunting, alas, IS allowed under local wizarding law. And boy, to the local purebloods like to exploit that. Hell, a lot of muggle-borns and squibs seem to enjoy it, too. Muggle-borns, after all, have more to lose from a basilisk being born.
Even so, purebloods control this part of British wizardry. Hence, any muggle minority that lives here is in danger. Some local purebloods like to poach muggle-borns...as well as muggles. And as far as muggle-borns and their relatively muggle families are concerned, they never get caught often enough.
Besides the Malfoys, the local pureblood families that've colonized Wiltshire include the Carrows, the Crouches, the Fawleys, the Greengrasses, the LeStranges, the Prewetts, the Selwyns, the Shafiqs, and the Yaxleys. Here and there, the runaway kneazel/cat of a Selwyn can be spotted. The land of Greengrass Manor is MUCH bigger than that of Malfoy Manor...and naturally, the grass is greener...literally.
The Prewetts, of course, live near the edge of wizarding Wiltshire. Here, they maintain a very unstable relationship with the Malfoy and Weasley families. While pureblood families have been known to rival one another, the Malfoys and Weasleys seem to be more at it these days than they tended to be in previous generations...
To codepend the pureblood supremacists in their bad behavior, there are goblins and vamps who live here, too. Most of the vamps live in a castle that once, a long time ago, belonged to an over-revered scion of the Gaunt family. But then, one day, the Gaunts bred a basilisk, and the Ministry retaliated by evicting them, and auctioning the castle to a vampire colony. Now, a moving painting of Count Drakul hangs, where such a painting of Salazar Slytherin once hung.
The basilisk's only victim was a half-blood Greengrass witch. Her mother was a blood traitor; her father was a muggle. She was still pre-pubescent.
The local goblins live in mills and foundries here and there, throughout the shire. Pathological workaholics, they seldom sleep. They work around the clock. On the upside, they make it possible for a wizard to get their enchanted auto fixed on a Sunday. On the downside, nobody's ever sung the praises of the quality of a goblin's services. Which is only fine by them, since they don't even sing praises to their own services...as enviable and post-wizarding as they are.
In the woods, there are veelas. With that said, Agatha's half-shocked that THEY haven't gotten to Mickey's lust-starved eyes yet.
Over here, Crouch Manor stands. Here, mirrors and glass seem to be in high supply. And in the dungeons, that doesn't seem to be all.
In these dungeons, a very special potion is always brewing in the cauldrons. It seems that the Crouch patriline has many champion Polyjuice potioneers to boast about. But that makes sense; once, a Crouch used the potion to help his son escape from Azkaban, at the expense of the last wispy days of his marriage. Another Crouch, his son, once used the substance to impersonate an auror/school guard for ten months...all while keeping the real auror locked up in a bewitched trunk that he kept in what would've been that auror's office at that school. The chest was there, in plain sight, for ten months...and not even the headmaster or his deputies suspected a thing.
In a mill nearby, a Crouch witch puts her talents to better use, and helps some of the goblins forge mirrors and glassware. And they are VERY elegant.
Back at the Manor, alas, there are special greenhouses...where boomslangs and antlions are bred. Not just them, but also leeches, knotgrass, and fluxweed.
There are smaller cauldrons, in an outhouse near the greenhouse where the lacewing flies are bred. They're kept on special boilers, that are bewitched to stew each batch of flies for three weeks, nonstop. A few of the burners have time-turners attached to them; with them, the burners are capable of stewing a sole batch of lacewings, seemingly, in the amount of time it takes to watch a Quidditch game.
The vamps, who live in the Old Gaunt Castle, have generously provided this Manor with its leech supply. It hurts the vamps to give up a swarm of leviathans that're like children to them (leeches and vamps both suck blood); but the Crouches are always more than willing to compensate them for their compromise.
All over the manor grounds, there are entire patches of knotgrass. They can hardly compete with the emerald grass of Greengrass Manor...but at least knotgrass is useful as well as ornamental, on the Crouch lawn.
The knotgrass lawns of Nott Manor, alas, can probably compete with the stuff here at Crouch Manor... But then, for the time being, let's just hope that the Crouches and Notts don't become rivals...or at least, not like the Weasleys and Malfoys are already rivals...
Atop a tower, a special mirror hangs, from a swivel, just above where the fluxweed-growing greenhouse is. During the full moon, the moonlight hits the mirror, bounces off of it, and bounces off several mirrors, right before multiple mirror-generated rays of it are shined into the fluxweed greenhouse. During the short time each month this happens, the Crouch house-elves teleport in, and collect the ripe stuff, for as long as it takes for the moon to set at twilight.
Once, a loyal, yet very abused, house-elf named Winkey did this work for the Crouch family. Nowadays, alas, she's been presented with raiment, and released from the Crouches' service...and now, she cooks and cleans for four houses' worth of wizarding students at Hogwarts School.
Many times, the Crouch wizards have talked about turning Crouch Manor into a bicorn colony... Alas, the family needs to breed in order to survive...which means that every now and then, a Crouch wizard will be called upon to marry a witch. And if he does, and he's raising bicorns after he's married, he will have put a target on his back; or rather, TWO targets; one for each of the bicorn's horns.
Conveniently enough, though, there are Crouch witches, in the Hebrides, who breed bicorns. They've cast protective enchantments around the colonies, to keep married men and married wizards from trespassing. Here, they de-horn each bicorn, when the time comes, and send them to their clientele via owl courier. And for that, Crouch Manor, back in Wiltshire, also has an owlery.
In the Crouch Hebrides, Crouch witches sometimes send the bicorn horns to their men via albatross post, rather than via owl. If they order two, they deviously cross the two bicorn horns, while rigging them to their albatross couriers. The Crouch wizards never laugh, of course. Some, even, are too virgin to have ever read a certain muggle poem titled Rime of the Ancient Mariner...
In another greenhouse at the Manor, the boomslang snakes flow, sometimes from holes in the walls, like leaks. The Crouches never stop breeding them. As far as the Crouches are concerned, boomslangs are Africa's gift to wizardry. They certainly give transfiguration a new name; and a BAD name, if you asked a few of the Ministry's employees.
But then, of these snakes, the Crouches have a VERY prolific supplier. They live in Wiltshire...and what luck, they're pureblood, too.
Not too far away, Shafiq Manor stands. It seems that there are more domes and onion domes atop this pureblood estate, than there are over other pureblood family HQs...
Here, the land is virtually a serpent farm. They slither around, within the manor wall. The wall is enchanted, to keep them from slithering over, through, or under it. Atop each of the walls' corners, a rooster sculpture stands, high and mighty, plume raised, and at the ready. These sculptures never become animated...but they can generate very loud noises, if the snakes get too close. Snakes can't normally hear; but somehow, magically, they ALWAYS hear the crows of these sculptures.
Down from the wall, a spider rappels, from a silken thread. He severs himself loose, lands on his eight legs, and crawls around, here and there. But then, he stops...with all of his many eyes wide open...
He's surrounded by snakes; most foreign, and most from Islamic-influenced lands. Like a frightened little argus, the spider rears onto its front legs, generates a silken balloon, and paraglides to safety...barely missing a boomslang's strike, as the latter speedily delivers.
Outside the wall, surrounded by undergrowth, Genghis Connie slithers forth, and stops at the wall's base. Past it, she can hear the parseltongue of her kin. She understands what they say. They cook up a lot of steamy drama...
Alas, Connie recalls that she's here for a new master, not a sorority. Snakes don't do fraternities. With that said, Connie's got no freaking idea why the Shafiqs keep so many serpents in the same space... But then, if the tombs of Indiana Jones can get it to work, apparently the Shafiqs can too...
Somewhere out here, Connie's new master lives. She can just feel it. She can hear his parseltongue, calling her sweet name...