"Lumos." Jon drew his wand and spoke under his breath.
Both wand tips flared together, two matchheads struck in a world of dark.
By that thin light he took stock. Sheer rock hemmed them in on every side. A few thick stone pillars shouldered the ceiling. Stalactites hung in twisted shapes; stubby stalagmites pushed up from the floor. The ground itself felt soft underfoot, slick with moss.
He listened. Wind hissed through the hollows, needling at the skin; beneath it, if you ignored the gusts and really listened, a faint run of water murmured somewhere out of sight.
This wasn't right. It wasn't their scheduled destination. However idle a Ministry clerk might be, the Department of Magical Transportation wouldn't key a Portkey to drop travellers into a place like this.
Portkey failure, or deliberate interference? He couldn't yet tell.
Astoria edged closer and caught a small fistful of his robes, her fingers cool and tight. Daphne was bolder, wand up, studying the nearest wall.
Jon turned to the "traveller" who'd arrived ahead of them. "Harry, what are you doing here?"
"I was supposed to be off to Greece," Harry Potter said, the shock easing from his face as he spoke. "With the Weasleys, and my godfather, Black, plus Lupin, Tonks, and Professor Moody. But halfway through the Portkey, it just… stopped sticking to me. I got dropped here."
"I don't even know how long I've been stuck. Three, four hours? Might be the better part of half a day."
"What time did your Portkey go?" Jon asked, frowning.
"About one in the morning, I think."
"Then you've been here roughly an hour. Ours left at two." Jon paused. "Hold on—Harry. You mean you sat here the whole time? You didn't try the tunnels?"
He couldn't help the look he gave Harry; it wasn't how a wizard behaved, and it scraped against what he expected of a Gryffindor.
"Yes," Harry said, a little abashed. "I've got a month to go before I'm seventeen. I can't just use magic outside school. And more importantly, my wand was in my backpack. When the Portkey let go of me, Sirius grabbed for the pack to pull me back. He didn't get me. He pulled the whole bag off."
So he'd been dumped here alone, empty-handed. No wand, no food, no way to send a message, and darkness pressing on every side. Wandering blind in a cave without magic wasn't a risk he'd taken. He'd waited, hoping the others would find him.
They hadn't. Jon's party had.
Jon kept his head. He reached down, got Harry to his feet, and had just turned to introduce the Greengrass sisters when—
"Look, there's a way through!" Daphne, still ranging the edge of their little pool of light, pointed with her wand at a mouth in the rock.
"Don't go in yet," Jon said sharply. She had already leaned half her body into the opening; she pulled back at once.
Blundering about a cavern was a poor plan. Darkness and repeating patterns stripped anyone's sense of direction. Ventilation ran bad in most caves; carbon dioxide pooled in low ground, and you could drift into slow suffocation if you weren't careful. And ceilings failed. A bit of noise in the wrong place, and you shook down loose rock. With luck, you'd only catch a few chunks. Without it, you collapsed the chamber.
And this one felt wrong. There might be more than geology at work.
Either way, they needed a way out—fast, but not blind.
Daphne retreated to his side, nerves showing. "Jon, what do we do?"
"Let me." He lifted his wand toward the opening she'd found. "Expecto Patronum."
Silver vapor streamed from the wand and caught, brightening and drawing itself together until it resolved into a single, solid creature of light—
A nearly grown Panda.
A Patronus had weight in the world without being of it, a shape made of a wizard's strongest, clearest hope. In a cave, it was the perfect scout.
Jon nodded to it. Find us a way out of this darkness.
The silver glow flowed into the low mouth and vanished.
"Jon, how did you end up here?" Harry asked, steadier now.
"Same as you. We were bound for Greece." Jon glanced around at the slick rock and shadow. "The Portkey stirred and set us down in this hole. No idea where 'this' is. Could be Greece. Could be anywhere near."
He made the introductions anyway. "This is Gryffindor's Harry Potter—you know the name. Harry, Astoria Greengrass of Slytherin, and her sister, Daphne."
They exchanged small nods. Astoria had her wand out now but didn't use it. Unlike her sister, she was still underage; the rule stood unless the situation demanded otherwise.
They waited a breath, then another. Silver reappeared, the Panda cantering back into their light and lifting a paw to beckon.
"Move," Jon said, face set. "We're getting out of here."