Most wizarding families end up living in the countryside, or, at least, on the outskirts of Muggle civilization. Usually after Hogwarts, the young muggle-born graduates choose to move back to the more crowded neighborhoods and cities of their non-magical families. The drive to reconnect with relatives and friends that they only saw briefly over the summer breaks and holidays of their schooling overcomes the desire to compete for those few, crowded, magical apartments close to the apprenticeships scattered throughout Diagon and Knockturn Alley. However, it isn't long before some of those graduates have children. Toddlers who make lights sparkle in their hands or giggling girls and boys who send their toys floating through the air.
Accidental magic can be hard to contain, almost impossible to hide from muggle neighbors who can easily peer over those suburban fences or stare at young parents in crowded subways with toddlers who don't know enough not to make lights dance.
It doesn't take long for most muggleborns to grow tired of the constant Ministry visits where neighbors are obliviated due to this burst of magic or that. Nor does it take long for the patronizing remarks of Ministry officials to make them feel foolish for trying to cling on to their childhood homes. Most end up fleeing to the old villages and hamlets. Godric's Hollow especially draws in the young families, eager to live in the place that has become a symbol of hope to those who feared death under the ended reign of terror of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
For those who want a less famous home, Upper Flagley serves families well. Populated enough that magical children can host their own quidditch matches over the hills, a parent's pain from moving away from old homes can be buried underneath the welcoming community around them that surrounds their sons and daughters with friends.
Except for when a different type of pain burns green through the night skies above them, unburying old fears that should have long been banished.
Kingsley Shacklebolt walks upon the cobblestone street that snakes into the hills. Sunlight gleams brightly off of the stones, casting the fields around him in a sparkle of green as the dew upon the grass catches the light. The early songs of the birds flittering from their night perches in the trees disguise the quiet of the human town around them.
It's the beautiful type of morning where young children should be rushing past Kingsley. Their broomsticks clutched in their hands as they race each other to spend the day flying with their friends, decorating the sky above the hills with the blur of their brooms.
Instead, a serpent slides out of a sickly skull dangling in the air above a house on the outskirts of this town. The bright sunlight washes away most of its sickly green, yet Kingsley still shudders when he glances up at it.
Behind the auror in the more crowded streets away from the hills, the entire town stays silent. The magical parents of Upper Flagley have spelled shut their doors and windows. No doubt many of them have floo'ed themselves and their young children to friends' homes scattered throughout the country while those who remain keep their precious loved ones silent and unseen under layers upon layers of hastily cast wards.
The frown upon Kingsley's face grows grim as he spots his fellows rushing around the edges of the old Crouch family's lands. The tell-tale emerald robes of the Ministry's professional curse-breakers pace along the property's boundaries as they raise their wands over the invisible enchantments that guard the home.
Not too far from them, watches another auror. His short, stout frame made more distinguishable by the dull and ragged leather coat he wears and the greying, blond hair upon his head.
"Alastor," Kingsley greets even if there is no need to announce his presence beyond politeness. With his enhanced sight, Moody would have seen him from a long way off.
The older wizard turns, his false electric blue eye briefly resting on Kingsley before it rotates in its brass ring, no doubt watching the cordoned off house through the back of Alastor's head as he nods his own greeting to Kingsley.
"The blood wards are still up," Alastor Moody states, his normal dark eye reading the reaction in Kingsley's expression, "the curse-breakers confirmed that it's the old family wards, otherwise the land would have been trying to shake them off by now."
Kingsley stops in shock, looking at the two-storied home sitting silently in the center of said wards.
"Crouch is still alive?!" That's impossible. When the Dark Mark hangs in the air, it's always over a scene of death and misery. Sometimes, if it could be considered a mercy, the corpses are untouched, the telltale sign of a quick flash of green stealing them from this world. Other times…other times Kingsley remembers just how many aurors retired after the war, trying to flee the memories of what they had seen in deceptively quiet homes.
For the wards to still be up, that has to mean that old Bartemius Crouch is somehow alive. He is the last of the Crouch line, the only one left of the blood that fuels the ancestral enchantments.
"Apparently," Moody snorts before turning back to the silent house and the pacing cursebreaker around it, "though I doubt it's the Crouch you're thinking about."
A shard of ice forms a pit in Kingsley's stomach as he stares at the back of his long-time friend.
"Dawlish has already questioned some of the townsfolk. Supposedly there was a strange man staggering through the streets just after that went up," Moody snarls at the Mark hanging in the air, unlikely to fade for hours yet.
"No one wanted to get too close, obviously, but we've already collected a few of the witnesses' memories for the pensieves at the Ministry. I'll look over them myself as soon as these wards are down, but I think you and I both know whose face we'll see."
"That's not possible," Kingsley looks to the gleam of white that cracks through the air as one of the curse-breakers carves a rune in the space in front of her. A dome, ever-shifting in and out of sight, warps into existence around the Crouch lands.
"Crouch's son died years ago in Azkaban. Perhaps the man is still alive in there. If the Death Eater didn't use the killing curse…" Then what? Is the former Head of the aurors clinging on to life by his fingernails, some flesh-eating curse devouring him inside out. Or maybe the old man is like the Longbottoms now. His sanity shredded under the Cruciatus Curse, leaving little to rescue when they finally do break through.
Moody shrugs at unsaid horrors in Kingsley's trailing off words.
"I guess we'll find out," he simply states as the cracks in the solidifying dome widen.
An ordinary man would have assumed that it was one of the still free Death Eaters suspected to have lied as to just how coerced they were into joining He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's forces. There are plenty of them to pick from, and if you pare it down by the skill and intelligence needed to break into Crouch's home then there's less than a handful that are truly suspect.
If you're willing to accept the improbable like Kingsely, then perhaps it's reasonable to assume that one of the few criminals that are still on the run may have finally decided to risk coming back to their homeland. Case in point, the eldest member of the Parkinson family remains missing, old enough to have died of age at this point, but he and a few of the younger Death Eaters are still technically at large. No doubt hiding in some dark corner of the globe.
It takes a paranoid man like Alastor Moody to take one look at some blood wards and to assume the impossible, but Kingsley can't help but be relieved to have such an auror on his side.
The room is too used to be a shrine to a dead son. The sheets on the bed are ruffled from use and there's a stench of something particularly human lingering in the air. A few of the trinkets that must have been on the shelves are scattered upon the floor as if someone shoved them aside to grab the more important mementos.
A few gaps among the books lined up on their shelves draws Kingsley's eyes for a moment before he closes them and sighs. Behind his eyelids, he can still envision the gleaming silver of the small replica of the Quidditch Cup that rests just before the tip of his shoes.
Crouch's wand is missing. Moody and Kinglsey have both already turned the entire master bedroom upside down looking for it. A Death Eater who broke in from the outside would have not had a need to grab it.
Break it in half, yes. There's been too many times that Kingsley has come across a murdered muggle-born's wand that's been snapped apart. A symbol of the belief that they don't deserve the magic of their world, even in death when a wizard and their wand are buried together.
There's not even a sliver of wood left out in the open. And even with the hatred that lingers towards Crouch after the war and his brutal judgements against those suspected of serving a dark lord, there isn't a single Death Eater who'd completely destroy the wand of a fellow pureblood.
The clunk of Moody's wooden leg echoes through the halls as he nears Kingsley. His brief search of the other rooms must already be complete.
"I've already sent a patronus to Dumbledore," Alastor's gruff voice worsens the tight tension in Kingsley's shoulders, "he's probably already on his way to check on the boy."
"Boy?" Kingsley looks to the other man with the electric blue eye rotating in its brass ring.
"Potter." Moody responds shortly, "Barty and the Lestranges were the only ones insane enough to go looking for him through the Longbottoms. It'd be foolish to assume that a few years in this house would be enough to make scum like that forget his 'mission.'"
"If we're lucky," Moody continues despite Kingsley's rising horror, "the bastard will be too disoriented from whatever spellwork Crouch was using to keep him in here to think straight. More likely to make a mistake that way."
"And if we're not lucky…" Moody trails off as he steps past the doorway. It goes unsaid that there will be more poor families like the Longbottoms if this particular Death Eater has enough of his wits about him.
Moody looks through the room, his dark eye piercing while the blue one's gaze lands on each corner. He mutters to himself as he paces past Kingsley.
"Evan Rosier and Regulus Black went to school with him, but they're both dead…maybe another classmate…no."
"What's missing?" The old auror stops at one of the gaps in the shelfs, staring hard as if he can divine what used to be there.
"The wand." Kingsley says in spite of the horror rooting him to the spot. The strange stars enchanted onto the ceiling above twinkle peacefully as he forces himself to continue. "There's no way he'd want to keep his father's wand. Not after this."
Moody whirls to face him, his blue mad-eye rotating in its socket.
"Ollivanders!" Alastor shouts, his wand drawn, shaking on the spot as if to apparate right there and then. With a nod, Kingsley draws his own wand because this is not the time to dawdle. They can report to the Ministry later once they check the wandmaker's shop. As Moody spins on the spot, vanishing with a crack, Kingsley follows him with a turn into the crushing vortex.
With any luck, the elderly wandmaker isn't already dead or worse.