Just had a brainwave...
Okay, so Hallie and Toby heard their Father killed protecting them when their mother hid with them in the closet when death eaters attacked the house.
However Hallie recently discovered that their Father was, or might have been, a death eater and she doesn't know if he was on the order side spying on death eaters or vise versa and she wants to find out and she is starting to question her entire life.
However I'm thinking that maybe he didn't actually die and during the death eaters attack he killed one of the death eaters and then that scared the others away once they knew he was willing to kill (they maybe didn't want to kill him but take him to the leader for questioning instead). He then quickly transfigured the dead death eater to look like him whilst his family were left in a stony state of shock in the closet then fled just before they came out to find 'his' dead body.
In other words he is still out there and has been in hiding. Keeping up with Hallie's life through the media or watching her of course and ensuring his children's safety whilst hiding from both death eaters and order members as nobody knows who he could trust.
Ultimately it was better for his family to believe him to be dead than find out the truth and if the death eaters, or Order, believed him to be alive it would put his family at risk? He could easily have tracked down the other two death eaters (three came to the house) and killed them... It would make him a little twisted so I'm thinking he would be an interesting character.
But what allegiance would he be? I feel there are a few gaps in the story...Maybe he was neither and simply joined both factions and pretended to be a spy for both so he could assess the situation and have a better understanding and know their secrets, which would be useful as he was an auror at the ministry? That could make sense whilst providing confusion between both parties and nobody would really know his allegiance because he essentially didn't have an allegiance other than to the ministry? I'm thinking he would have leaned a lot more towards the order as he raised Hallie with those sorts of values, yet at the same time he would have been willing to kill? Something Hallie is against.
Or it could be as simple as he was an order member spying on the death eaters and they found out, or suspected that he was a spy so the leader sent death eaters to collect him for questioning but he refused and in an attempt to save his family killed one of the attackers and then realised that him being alive mean't his family would be in danger and he could potentially end up being sent to azkaban and wouldn't want his children knowing their father had killed someone so faked his death then tracked down the other death eaters so they couldn't leak what he had done?
Whether he is alive or not Hallie is going to try and get her job back at the ministry so she can look through old documents of when he was an auror and try and link the cases he had to certainf factions, if he proved more lenient with some more than others, if he was ever cautioned or anything like that... I'm not sure if she will find much yet but it could be interesting.
Thoughts anyone?