If there was one concept that Harry James Potter had been forced to reconcile within his rather short existence, it was secrets.

It seemed to Harry that through some unfair conspiracy in the universe, the entire course his life was defined by a numerous amount of secrets of one kind or another. They were good and bad, big and small, and involved almost every person and subject possible.

There were the secrets that came into play before he had any say in the matter, such as his parents necessary secret as to the identity of their secret keeper, or the very real threat of exposure of the magical world to the muggle population that Harry was firmly told was not to come to pass, as the separation of the two very different communities had been in place for centuries.

There were the secrets between friends, like Ron's insistence that nobody find out about his deathly fear of spiders or the fact that Harry had been warned on pain of castration that no one was to become aware that Hermione snorted when anyone told a particularly clever pun.

There were the secrets he was asked to keep, such as the details of the events that had transpired at the end of every school year, (Dumbledore was very particular when it came to the sharing of important information) and the secrets he felt were not his right to share. Such as his disastrous little foray into Snape's memories the previous year during his Occlumency lesson, and his following suspicion that his Potions Professor was more involved in lives of Harry's parents then he had led others to believe.

Harry's biggest secret, however, was kept not from a sense of duty, or even fear of bodily harm, but rather a sense of lonely responsibility and the complete conviction that no one could possibly understand. Harry was as much a stranger to forced independence as he was to the necessity of secrets.

Which is to say, he was much too familiar with it for his own liking.

If an observing psychologist could have a glimpse into the savior of the wizarding world's mind, they might find a lasting impression made upon him by the countless number of adults who had failed him in his lifetime. Some were supposed to love him, some were supposed to teach him. Others to protect him, and still, others to stand by him in times of tribulation. To preserve what was left of his childhood before it was too late. They had failed. And in Harry's eye's, the lesson of independence and self-reliance seemed infinitely irreversible.

Such were the musings of Gryffindor's golden boy as he sat alone in a train compartment of the Hogwarts express waiting for his friends to arrive after his fifth year's summer vacation.

Harry sighed heavily as he leaned against the softly cushioned seats of the train compartment and gently cradled his carefully glamoured arm to his chest. It had been a long summer. The shouts and taunts, so common in his summertime residence, had morphed to an uneasy hostility with his relatives after Harry returned to Number Four Privet Drive at the beginning of that dreadful summer.

Already suffering in silence from the death of his godfather, Harry had been hard pressed to care about the tension he felt building in the suspiciously quiet weeks leading up to the crowning event of yesterday, nor could he find it in himself to dredge up any modicum amount of concern about the severely limited rations of food he had been receiving in the last three months.

Subdued and silent, Harry had born the mistreatment with a weary resentment that had seemed more appropriate than anger. In fact, it seemed to Harry that all of the anger he had the capacity to feel in his entire life had been expelled the night Sirius fell through a twisting shadowy curtain far beyond Harry's reach.

And so it was not with anger that Harry had confronted his Uncle the day before September 1st to insist that he would be returning to Hogwarts the coming school year. Neither did Harry feel the expected anger as he was slammed into the wall by his wrist for his efforts of diplomacy. His goal was met, his point was made. He would be returning home to the wizarding world the next day.

Not anger. Just resignation and the splintering pain of a fractured wrist.

As he had sat in his small cluttered room wrapping his injury, Harry's one thought had been on how exactly he would be able to conceal this injury from his friends the next day. He was not so untrusting in the sensibility of the adults at Hogwarts to assume that punishments would not be carried out against his Aunt and Uncle for their actions towards him should anyone find out. Nor was he particularly eager to be removed from their home now that he knew the true severity of The Dark Lord's enmity towards him and anyone who dared to harbor him. No. He thought as he carefully researched glamours to hide his malnourishment and injuries and casually arranged to arrive at the train station half an hour early to perform his little bit of concealing magic. As miserable as it was for him at the Dursleys, it was the safest option for everyone he cared about.

As he stared out the window he ignored the small nasty voice in his mind that reminded him of his other motive in the matter. It really wasn't all that important.