"Father?" 18-year-old Severus asked. "How did you and Mother meet? And what happened to...them?"

The Dark Lord looked up at his son from the desk where he worked, his eyelids closing slightly, narrowing the eyes to slits. "Why do you ask, Severus? After all this time?"

Severus shrugged. "You have never explained anything to me in full. Haven't I a right to know, Father?"

Voldemort sighed, and began his story.

Tom Riddle had been fairly young when his parents died, leaving him the pureblooded heir to the vast family fortune, the very last of the Riddles. He fell in love with a feisty witch he remembered from school named Eileen Prince, who did not return his amour, and instead wedded a Muggle named Tobias Snape.

A few months into the marriage, Eileen realized her mistake, all too late: Tobias was an alchoholic and abusive. She fled to Tom after a particularly difficult night, begging forgiveness, which he readily granted, as he had never stopped loving her and never lost hope.

She became Tom's mistress, which pleased everyone for a couple weeks, until she fell pregnant. When Tobias found out, he ate,pted to murder the unborn fetus, whom he called a "love-child", but Tom killed him first.

Eileen didn't even mourn her husband, instead settling into a new life as Eileen Riddle. Severus was born, and he was spoiled rotten right from the beginning. He had everything he needed: toys, clothes, books, friends.

He attended Hogwarts as Severus Snape; going as Severus Riddle was too obvious; only the teachers knew who he really was. He was an introvert, but he did make a few friends, mostly Slytherins, but he befriended, and crushed on, a crimson-haired Gryffindor girl named Lily Evans.

He did well in most of his classes, excelling in Potions, along with Lily, and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Around the middle of his years of school, Tom and Eileen started fighting. Severus was sorely neglected, quite horribly so compared to his younger years. He was bullied by a gang of four boys who called themselves the "Marauders", and when he was hung upside down with his own spell, he snapped and called Lily a Mudblood. Unsurprisingly, she turned against him and started taunting him too, although she never used physical torment.

Sometime around the beginning of his last year, the bullying grew to be so bad Severus started self-harm. He slit the insides of his elbows, using his own spell, Sectumsempra, which stung a lot more than the Muggle razor blades, and cut a lot deeper.

He came close to committing suicide, but decided against it when his parents chose to have another child in an attempt to make peace. Nearly a year later, after Severus was out of school, a baby girl was born on September 19th, 1979, on the precise stroke of midnight. She was christened Vivienna Celestine Riddle.

Unfortunately, the baby did not help family issues, and when Vivienna was only a few months old, Eileen fled with her in the middle of the night. They left nearly everything, except for a few pieces of jewelry that were worth a lot of Muggle money.

They were never found again, at least, not in person.

What Eileen did not know was that Tom had placed a piece of his soul within the baby girl's mind, making her a Horcrux, and forever connecting the two.