Livia Snape (nee Kalderash) was a pureblood witch reared in Chilia Veche, a small village on the Danube Delta in Romania. She grew up in a large Lovara Romany family, having two sisters, Georgiana Kalderash and Elena Kalderash, an elder brother, Teadora Kalderash, and three cousins, At 20, she gladly honored an arranged marriage to Septimus Adrian Snape of Knaresborough, in northern Yorkshire. The two had fallen deeply in love with each other when Livia was thirteen.