Koko would always tell herself she was fine. After all, she was a kind, optimistic, outgoing person. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a girl who was a bit smaller than average and a bit better-looking than average, and maybe a bit sturdier than average, but aside from all of that, she didn't really diverge from the norm, whatever that was.

Her family were more than comfortable in terms of wealth. She'd finally gotten to the point where she could say she was close with everyone in her family, so there was nothing wrong there. But she found she disliked sleeping without her wand near her, sometimes even without light. When she slept, it was lightly, and while she slept well, the slightest disturbance could ruin her night.

She was fine. But that didn't mean she had stopped wearing long-sleeved shirts to hide where her blood had turned to what seemed like ink. That didn't mean she had stopped eyeing any insect, bug or arachnid with a certain level of innate suspicion, even mostly harmless ones like ladybirds or butterflies. That didn't mean she didn't remember the pull of the darkness that had once roamed the halls of Hogwarts.

Koko was peaceful and liked to avoid thinking of the past. That didn't mean it didn't come up when she least expected it, like when she was flipping through a textbook and found an image of a bug, or when she was writing a letter to someone and the ink made a bloodlike blotch on the parchment. She was fine, she told herself, fine, totally fine. Even if she couldn't wear loose jewellery on her arms because the gentle brush of beadwork against her skin felt too much like the quick, light legs of a spider.

She was fine! But, of course, there were still, and would always be, skeletons in her closet.