My first ever memory was of mummy playing with the Malfoy's cat. I suppose I was about 2 and a bit, sitting on a rug in the Malfoy manor – the rug was green, just like the robes Daddy was wearing and the scarf that Uncle Lucius had hanging over the fire place. I was looking at the cat when there was a flash of light that followed my mum saying "Crucio!" It made the cat dance and scream. I clapped my hands with glee, crawled onto my mother's lap and told her to do it again, laughing with delight until eventually, the cat stopped screaming with pain, and never got up again. It was my first encounter with death; I remember being confused... was this good or bad? Then Mummy laughed said it was no great loss, "what was a mere cat to purebloods like us?" and started burning little holes in Aunt Cissy's Couch. I laughed too- if that's what Mummy did, that's what I would do- and asked her to burn the cat. She did. And so we sat there her on the slightly singed but otherwise fine couch, me on her lap, overcome with fits of delighted, manic laughter at an ignited cat that my mother had killed just minutes before hand.
We had potato and onion soup for dinner that night. Mummy told me that Daddy had made it so I threw the bowl on the floor. Funnily enough that was the most memorable part of the day, not learning how to cope with death, but learning how to cope with my father's cooking. That's just the sort of upbringing I had, really. Death was trivial, torture was entertainment and Dad couldn't do anything right.