TITLE: Attached

AUTHOR: Jade Okelani

EMAIL: jade@vanishingscroll.com

RATING: PG-13

ARCHIVE: Please do not archive. But if you'd like to link, drop me a line and let me know.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This fic was inspired by the RPG Triumvirate. Many of the Triumvirate characters seem to have hijacked my muses of late (witness: Call of the Wolf) and they refuse to give them back!

DEDICATION: They know who they are.

BETA THANKS: To NO ONE, baby! Sarea's gone to bed early because of her hellish job, and I'm unsupervised and inspired! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (That's my infantile way of saying "all mistakes are mine, this is unbeta'd, I'm sorry.")

SUMMARY: The afternoon of the Malfoy tea party, things go a little differently. (Ginny's bound on top of the bed, for starters. She gets left alone, for another. Curiouser and curiouser.)

~

Chained to a bed, lying atop it like a sacrificial animal of some sort because her stupid friend found a pair of stupid fuzzy things in a drawer, all taking place within the walls of Draco Malfoy's home.

Somehow, she'd had great hope that this day would turn out better.

Stupid Muggle handcuffies things. Stupid Malfoy Manor. Stupid Malfoy sending her this stupid (all right, elegant, soft, perfect) dress. She was sure the situation she found herself in could easily be blamed on Malfoy's inappropriate gift. She just hadn't thought of how yet.

"Lav, it's no good," she said, near hysteria, her legs kicking uselessly against the soft mattress. "I'm handcuffed to a bed in Malfoy Manor and there's just no getting around it."

"But there has to be something," Lav said, though she sounded pretty darn helpless.

A thought occurred to Ginny. "Downstairs -- Snape. Snape is here. Downstairs. Oh, don't look at me like that, Lav; I know it's drastic, but surely it's better than one of Draco's parents or some twisted house elf that makes Kreacher look friendly."

"Who's Kreach--"

"NEVER MIND WHO KREACHER IS! I'm HANDCUFFED! To a BED! At MALFOY MANOR!" Ginny rattled her wrists a few times for emphasis. "Get Snape. Now! Please!"

"I swear I'll come back for you," Lav vowed earnestly, then turned and ran out of the run, shutting the door carefully behind her.

Yeah, Ginny thought, staring up at her bound wrists in futility, I'll just lie here. Oh, I just had to ask what they were. And Lav just had to demonstrate. And I just had to let her. Really, who does that? Who handcuffs another person to a bed to show them how it's done? And what kind of a total moron lets them?

That's me. Ginny Weasley, moron for hire. I'd make a killing if people ever needed to know the absolute wrong thing to do in any given situation.

There is one bright, shining light on this gloomy, cloudy day: Handcuffed to a bed in Malfoy Manor, with no idea when Lav will be able to subtly get Snape away from the party, is absolutely the worst thing that could have happened at this party.

"Well, well," a snide voice said from the doorway, "what has my little hypocrite gotten herself into in my father's personal quarters?"

"Malfoy," she begin, wetting her lips nervously, "do you think you might be able to let me out of these?" Another wrist rattle. It was fast becoming a second language.

"Of course," he said, then moved toward the bed until he could sit on the edge, his hip touching the outside of her thigh.

They regarded each other for a few moments. Finally, Ginny lost it: "Then why don't you?" She took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to let him see how close she was to having a fit.

"Because it's just too good as it is," he said easily, brushing the tips of his fingers over her silk clad hip. "Love the dress," he commented absently, "though I didn't imagine I'd get to see you in it flat on your back quite so soon."

"Pig," she muttered, turning crimson.

"You shouldn't say things you don't mean," he murmured softly, his fingers tracing patterns closer to her stomach, the lower curve of it, then back to the jut of her hipbone. "You're much too bony," he said conversationally, "you should try to put on a few pounds."

"I'm not too bony!" she objected. Then her eyes narrowed. "And what should I care if you think I'm too bony?"

"Oh, you care," he said softly. "I think you care quite a bit."

"Then you really are as stupid as you look," she muttered, giving a last, futile tug to her wrists. And it was futile, of course. She'd proved that well enough over the past few minutes. The smug expression on Malfoy's face confirmed it.

"You've got quite the tongue on you for someone who's managed to get herself tied and bound to my father's bed," he drawled.

"Stop mentioning your father's bed," she said, screwing her eyes up. It was bad enough being handcuffed in Malfoy Manor; the idea that she was lying on Lucius Malfoy's bed, where he had done Merlin knows -- oh, ewwwwwww, stop thinking about it!!!

"That dress is even lovelier than I remember it being," he noted absently, the tips of his fingers brushing lower still, skirting around places she wished he wouldn't (ever stop touching).

"I'm surprised you remembered it at all," she muttered, staring at the wall just over his left shoulder. Surely, if she could just keep herself from looking into the cruel gray of his eyes, she might survive this horror.

"Why wouldn't I remember?" He sounded almost offended she'd suggested such a thing. She was sure he wasn't.

"An evening with a Weasley?" She forced a laugh. The sound of it made her cringe. "Yes, I'd imagine the shame of it must be burnt into your brain."

His fingers abruptly ceased their motions, and the flat of his palm skimmed slowly up her side until it cupped the outside of her breast. She sucked in a sharp breath, but refused to give him the satisfaction of begging him to stop. What could he really do to her, after all? There was a party going on downstairs. Lav would be back any second, Professor Snape in tow. He had no real power over her, beyond the fleeting imprisonment she seemed to find herself in. She would not give him something new to mock her with.

"That night was a bit of fun," he said, and his tone sounded almost sincere. "Or at least, not as dreadfully boring as it could have been. You're a laugh, Weasley." His fingers traced the incredibly low cut of her dress. "The shopkeeper was a bit scandalized when I told her to make the …. adjustments …. to your dress."

"I knew it!" she cried, coming half off the bed in her outrage. The movement had an unexpected effect, however, as his fingers got caught in the edge of her dress, and the back of his hand brushed over her nipple. An involuntary cry left her mouth, and she forced it to morph into a sound of protest. "Get your filthy hands off me, Malfoy, or I swear, I won't care about embarrassment or anything else, I will scream."

"I don't think you will," he challenged. "I think you'll lie here in that perfect dress -- I've spent several unproductive hours imagining you in it, incidentally, and I'll say that imagination has nothing on the reality of the situation, but I think you'll lie here, as I said, and let me do any bloody thing I want to you. And, Ginny, I think you'll like it."

His voice, speaking her name, was all it took, and a delicate shudder passed through her body. She wished she could pass it off as revulsion, but he was smiling again, small and satisfied, and she knew that nothing she said would fool him. She opened her mouth to make another feeble protest, but his fingers pressed against her lips lightly, shushing her, then staying behind to become better acquainted with the contours of her mouth.

"Malfoy," she whispered, but his head was getting closer to hers, and she forgot what she was going to say. Maybe that had been it. Why couldn't she seem to call him Draco? Would it make his body shudder the way her name from his lips made her? What would it feel like to make Draco Malfoy shiver in anguished anticipation? What was this attachment between them, this strange compulsion that kept her near him when fate wasn't conspiring to throw them together?

Why did she want to find all of the above out so badly?

There was barely any space between their mouths as he let his fingers slide down to caress her jaw. "I love you," he whispered against her mouth.

Ginny gasped, her heart racing so fast she was afraid it might run right out of her chest. "You-- I--"

His mouth met hers and she kissed him back without thought, without consent -- she kissed him back because her body knew no other way to react. I've never kissed him sober, she thought as his tongue swept at the seal of her lips, and I know why: he makes me feel drunk.

They parted and she lifted off the bed, unconsciously trying to follow his mouth. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw him wearing a smug expression.

"You're free," he said quietly.

"Wha--?" Her wrists. She wriggled them again, and found they no longer bound her to the headboard. "How did you--?"

"The safe words," Draco said, as though it were obvious. "They have to be something you're likely to never speak. 'I love you.' Merlin knows those words have never been spoken in this entire house, let alone in this bedroom."

Her mouth was opening and closing like a fish. That was how Snape found them, Lav trailing behind him anxiously. He narrowed his eyes at the sight they made on the bed, Ginny's breathing uneven, Draco's hair just slightly mussed, both their mouths looking slightly swollen from kissing.

"It's all right," Ginny said, forcing a bright smile. "Malfoy's let me out." She leapt up from the bed. "Sosorrytotroubleyousir," she said to Snape, grabbed Lav's hand, and ran from the bedroom, ran away from the Manor (they didn't even stop to say goodbye to Crabbe and Goyle), ran until she was safely back at the Burrow, avoiding Lav's questions as to what went on, until the other girl went home.

She ran, and she never looked back.

~