According to her eldest daughter, Druella had always been a sniffy old lady. She had raised her children to be proud of their pure-blood heritage, behaving with dignity and class like a proper witch should. But sometimes she took things too far, restricting where her children were allowed to nap, selecting the correct dishes and utensils her children could use at mealtimes, and so on until Bellatrix was getting fed up with her asinine rules.
At the time, Bellatrix was five years old. Her favorite location for an afternoon nap was the floor, specifically the floor underneath the table in their pristine dining room. But of course no pure-blood could be allowed to sleep on the floor.
"Only filthy Muggles sleep on the floor!" her mother spouted, reaching for her sleeping child and plucking her off the carpet. "No child of mine is going to sleep on the floor like an animal. I raised you better than that."
Little Bellatrix squirmed and whined, annoyed at being woken up from a peaceful slumber. Truth be told, she preferred the space under the table as a means of escaping her mother's strict rules and lectures. But no matter how many times she tried hiding from her, Druella still found her and hauled her out from under the table.
.oOo.
One day, Bellatrix decided that she'd had enough of her mother always interrupting her afternoon nap. She tucked her plush turtle under her arm, selected her favorite blanket, and crawled under the table as usual. Only this time she let her twisted imagination and uncontrolled magical abilities run wild, resulting in a nasty surprise when Druella went looking for her.
Her mother was on her way to the dining room, searching for her daughter since she'd been unable to locate the child in her room, when she discovered a pit had been carved in the floor around the dining room table. This pit had been filled to the brim with seething magma, creating a chasm that blocked off access to Bellatrix's chosen sleep spot.
The wicked child was clutching her stuffie and giggling when she saw the look of astonishment on her mother's face. "Careful, Mommy. The floor is lava," she hissed. Which then became her favorite game to play with the other children from that day forward.