A/N: It has been far too long. This is a sequel to the story "By King's Cross Station, I Sat Down & Wept" which was completed an age ago. I don't know if many of the readers for that story are still around. I hope so! It's always good to have readers!

In the previous story, Draco and Hermoine found their paths inevitably diverge, but in this story they come back to each other again and try resolve issues that have been left lingerng from the past. Am I doing a bad job of selling it? Probably. R&R, I always use fanfiction as a base for my own original fiction and like having constructive criticism to work off.

Thank god for Tumblr, otherwise I would not have had the inspiration to sit down and fulfil this sequel which has been LONG overdue.

EDIT:
1. The title is taken from Bat for Lashes' song Two Planets. For the time being, it's a working title until I find a better suited title. However, for now, it does its job for the plot so far. The song Daniel by the aforementioned band also helped kickstart this fiction.

2. (2/9/10) Got rid any reference to Bellatrix still alive (a mistake made which is explained fully in the next chapter's AN).

One of Two Planets Dancing

One: To Be Made Of Glass

He took out a parchment and swirled the quill in a nearby inkwell for sometime, thinking of what to say. In truth, he had nothing of real importance to say, but the foreign owl had long outstayed its welcome waiting for a reply to carry back to its owner. And Draco was done cleaning up after the rude, impatient creature.

B,

He paused, pursing his lips whilst stroking his chin with the quill.

'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'

There is nothing to do but read these days.

He paused again, mulling over this.

Better company than humans.

& in answer to your question: no. I think I shall stay where I am.

D.

"Now kindly fuck off," He murmured to the departing bird, his lips gripping onto a cigarette as he fumbled around in his pockets searching blindly for a lighter. He wasn't in the mood to divulge any further details. He liked to keep people at a distance. It was to be expected.

When he had lit his cigarette, he shook his head. Oh, he had wanted to, he always wanted to, but never could bring himself to ask. How is Hermione, do you speak to her, is she okay, what is she up to? He was too ashamed and afraid. Draco had spent so long over the last five years trying to take at least ten steps forward in his life, he did not want to risk any vulnerable moment to be snapped back three years earlier.

So he did what Draco always did best. He ran.

"Such is life."

Draco Malfoy had been running without rest for the last five years, running physically, mentally and within his soul. It had been a maze of mirrors, in which he caught himself running to and from his reflections like a solid pewter pendulum in motion. Such chasing trapped Draco in an image of himself; he became porcelain complexion, glass skin which condensed when old memories surfaced or when people tried to attach themselves too close to him.

In five years, the glass had cracked, shattered and forced back together again. Draco knew he had picked a losing side to begin with; he always had faith in Dumbledore and his army to defeat Voldemort. Besides, if they didn't succeed, it would only be a matter of time before another group of do-gooders were able to. It took a lot to learn and many atrocities before Draco had the courage to subvert the orders given to him.

She was right. Draco was only ever a little pawn in Voldemort's eyes. So he fought back, inch by inch, wherever possible to try redeem himself. These little acts put him in great danger, warranting his arrest within the Death Eater Circle, but also helped save his life when the war ended and Voldermort was vanquished. Found in a Death Eater prison, malnourished and two days away from death by torture, he was saved, and later given a second chance by the Ministry of Magic after several war crime trials.

Then he became the Ministry's pawn.

Draco had to laugh. After being found innocent of war crimes, he became the wizarding society's enigmatic figure; the public both feared and pitied him at the same time. Oh, he hated it; he hated the fickle nature of public interest. Different papers simultaneously publishing stories of both his demonic acts as well as sympathy stories, detailing his redeeming work for The Order and subsequent resulting torture.

Despite the growing fascination, Draco still had enemies, the volatile of which were Death Eaters who had escaped conviction. They were bitter because Draco was free from the threat of Azkaban. Though the public were fascinated by him, they would do little to protect him so Draco had to do something to protect himself. He knew what was in store for him if he did not protect himself, and he would do anything to avoid it. He withdrew from public life and lived like the rat in self-imposed exile, dodging the gas and traps which were intricately placed around his route in life.

This only wetted the public's appetite, with aurorers following suit as they used Draco as a case study to train future aurorers. The strange melancholic Cain pushed out into the wilderness, stricken from both Heaven and dirty Earth. Draco did feel he was between Purgatory and Hell. Stuck without Virgil as a guide.

The Ministry especially enjoyed Draco's self-imposed exile; he was probably the butt of various government departments. The lowest blow was when he found out he was being used as a case study to examine Aurorer trainees' criminal profiling skills. Deeply untrusting of the new Government that was set up in the wake of war, Draco would spy on the Aurorers at work when out in the field. Less so because he thought he could prove how corrupt the Ministry had become, he could prove that on a hundred counts, but more because he could outwit these Aurorers twice as many times over.

Draco snorted blowing smoke rings, remembering such a session.

"We do not expect to find him, but we hope to extract new information from witnesses around the area to add to the profile we have of him. As Aurorer trainees, one of the skills you must learn is psychologising criminals, and this is a fantastic opportunity to work on that skill. Draco Malfoy seems intelligent as do many other Death Eaters. Nevertheless, if you get into his mind, we find out he isn't smarter than us; we merely do not understand him. We have to understand him. This is essential to capturing escaped Death Eaters."

Draco remembered silently laughing then too. It was the cheesiest speech he had heard since he decided to amuse himself by tuning into these weekly feeds on him.

"Take notes. Draco Malfoy was born June the fifth, he –"

"Er, sir, we know all this. The Ministry just never told us exactly what he did during the war, all we know is what the general public knows; rumours. Those files haven't been released to us yet."

Draco sat himself down at the time, expecting the aurorer to do his usual lengthy (and unauthorised) biography of Draco which was almost always incorrect in certain key events. The aurorer thought he knew all the detals about Draco from interviews with his father and whatever they could get out of his mother. Maybe this was how Draco had survived so long, both out of the Ministry and Voldemort's death clasp: his father and mother still knew nothing about him.

They never knew all the little details. And it was those little tiny details which made all the difference.

Like the small ringlet of hair which escaped the tight bound of the bun she'd wound in her hair as she looked away from him on the second day of his trial. If you missed that detail, you missed the whole picture. Draco wanted to forget the whole scene in his head; he tried hard to abstract the images as to turn them into meaningless canvassed art. To no avail. They became Kandinskys, music and memory trapped in the movement of paint.

He scratched his head before turning the room, murmuring "forget it, forget it" to himself.

0000000000

But Snape was right. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Draco had done so many unforgivable things in the early part of the war. In that time, all he wanted to do was leave a note to her each time the Death Eaters attacked. Sum how shit he felt into one word. Nevertheless, 'Sorry' just seemed too incriminating for both himself and Hermione. When they finally found and murdered her parents, Draco also murdered and drowned her deep inside of him, the initial guilt and torment running out of his body; the will to survive strengthening. He resolved to be as good as he could ever be, so he was able to see as many days as his natural lifespan would permit.

But when would the devil come for him? This desperation to live was counter-balanced with a will to just end it all. Draco could not see the merit in the people who he hid from, couldn't see a point in the farce of a society the Ministry Officials had rebuilt after the war.

He looked to a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet sent to him by Blaise. Draco's wand had been crushed in the final battle, so he had to acquaint himself with a muggle standard of living, having certain magical objects be sent to him by Blaise. It was the state's slap on the wrist; a new wand would not be issued until ten years had passed. Five more years to go.

Blaise had the paper charmed it so it would update its content everyday. Draco would be damned if he paid for every single paper, it was complete garbage. But the recluse still needed to know what was going on inside the wizarding society.

He picked the copy up and scanned the front page.

"Lucius Malfoy is still awaiting trial in Azkaban, but the Kiss is guaranteed…" Two years ago, his heart would quicken reading his name, but over the last six months he had become quite accustomed to it. Like writing out a word over and over again until it held no meaning.

"Narcissa Malfoy is now residing in an insane asylum somewhere in the North-West of England, Ministry sources can confirm..."

Draco's eyebrow raised: he doubted ministry sources would be happy to confirm that leak of information.

His eyes glanced over to another section.

"Five years have passed since the Second Wizarding War, but Ministry officials are still to find one of Voldemort's right hand men, Goyle. In the long search for Goyle, the Ministry have lost three aurorers. In a speech given yesterday, the Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt stated 'It is imperative we find Goyle.' Goyle himself is reported to have long-term partner Pansy Parkinson beside him, along with some Death Eater Supporters…"

Draco stopped reading after the Parkinson comment. He was tired of their pairing of Goyle and Parkinson, when he knew full well she was dead in a ditch somewhere, all they had to do was find the body and they could not even manage that.

Draco thought about the letter he had sent off. Sometimes he wished he had more to say.

Zabini was the only person he corresponded with since his self-imposed exile. Draco trusted him enough to ensure that Zabini would not betray him, surprised that he still kept his word by Draco, as he was already under constant suspicion by the media who kept the whole public under their thumb. They did not trust any Slytherin who were associated with pardoned Death Eater members, which generally meant a good percentage of his age group and of the Slytherin house were watched closely. If they knew Zabini had been fraternising with the Draco, there would be no escape from the media frenzy that would follow. Draco respected Zabini enough to give him his freedom from infamy.

The world had not swapped into Utopia as everyone believed would happen once the Light side won. The world had instead grown dark, wiry with tangled leaves and dangerous insects crawling over the windows. Constantly threatened with black memories, the whole outlook on life had become predatory, the stream sullied with ink, and Ministry Officials, influenced by newspapers, slamming down its fist on any criminal occurrence.

The public had voted on a more conservative government to keep them safe, however the wrong people had been elected, plunging the remaining wizarding folk into a well as they stood on their platforms of power preaching the wrongs or murder whilst performing it. Democratic and opposition parties were quickly losing their voice and within two years, they had forcefully been dissipated into eggshells people stepped on.

Draco thought about it long into morning hours and wondered who had it harder – him dodging the state or the people living in it.

More specifically, he wondered how different his life was to that of Hermione's, finding it strangely funny their perceived roles had inverted completely to that of school; she was now probably living in a manor like a royal whilst he was out roaming the streets. He had no wish to see her ever again, lest be plunged in that strange mixture of love and confusion again.

"Maybe I do." He argued aloud. He shook his head after uttering the statement, "Going mad." He'd began having conversations with himself as of late. Plagued by the company of selves he had peeled off and discarded along the way.

"Such is life." He remarked once more, flinging the cigarette butt outside the window.