"...I remember you," he says. "You saw me in a shop and bowed."

"He remembers!” cries Dedalus Diggle, his top hat falling as he turns to look around at everyone. "Did you hear that? He remembers me!"

More people want to shake his hand—Doris Crockford keeps coming back for more—until a pale young man makes his way forward, very nervously. One of his eyes is twitching.

"Professor Quirrell!" says Hagrid. "Victor, Professor Quirrell will be one of your teachers at Hogwarts."

"E-E-Evans," stammers Professor Quirrell, grasping Victor's hand, "c-can't t-tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you."

"Thank you," he says, since that seems to be a safe reaction.

Quirrell laughs nervously. "You'll be g-getting all your equipment, I suppose? I've g-got to p-pick up a new b-book on vampires, m-myself." He looks terrified at the very thought. 

"Yes," he agrees, "that's why we're here, to get me my things for school."

"O-o-of course."

But the others won't let Professor Quirrell keep Victor to himself. It takes almost ten minutes to get away from them all. At last, Hagrid manages to make himself heard over the babble.

"Must get on—lots ter buy. Come on, Victor."

Victor follows Hagrid quietly out of the crowd, trying not to give any sign that he's desperate to get away.

Doris Crockford shakes Victor's hand one last time, and Hagrid leads them through the bar and out into a small, walled courtyard, where there's nothing but a trash can and a few weeds. He grins at Victor.

"Told yeh, didn't I? Told yeh you was famous. Even Professor Quirrell was tremblin' ter meet yeh—mind you, he's usually tremblin'."

"Yes, I noticed that."

He then turns to look at the brick wall. "Three up... two across..." he mutters. "Right, stand back, Victor."

He taps the wall three times with the point of his umbrella. The brick he touched quivers—it wriggles—in the middle, a small hole appears—it grows wider and wider—a second later they're facing an archway large enough even for Hagrid, an archway onto a cobbled street that twists and turns out of sight.

"Welcome," says Hagrid, "to Diagon Alley."

"It's magic," he says softly, smiling a very small smile.

"Aye, an' there's more where this came from."

He leads Victor through, and the archway shrinks instantly back into solid wall. The sun shines brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons—All Sizes—Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver—Self-Stirring—Collapsible, says a sign hanging over them.

"Yeah, you'll be needin' one," he says, "but we gotta get yer money first."

He nods.

They walk on, passing by a myriad stores and shops. A plump woman outside an Apothecary is shaking her head as they pass, saying, "Dragon liver, sixteen Sickles an ounce, they're mad."

A low, soft hooting comes from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium—Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Victor's age have their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," one of them says, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand—fastest ever—"

There are shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Victor's never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon...

He watches and listens in fascination.

Eventually: "Gringotts," says Hagrid. It's a snow-white building that towers over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, is a humanoid, about a head shorter than Victor. He has a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and very long fingers and feet. He bows as they walk inside.

Victor isn't sure if he's supposed to bow back. He settles for looking very serious, which is something of a default anyway.

"That's a goblin," Hagrid whispers to Victor once they're clear of earshot.

Now they're facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them: 

Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.

"Yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it," he says.

"I see that."

A pair of goblins bow them through the silver doors and they're in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins are sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There are too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins are showing people in and out of these. Hagrid makes for the counter.

"Morning," he says to a free goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Mr. Victor Evans' safe."

"You have his key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere," says Hagrid, and he starts emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of moldy dog biscuits over the goblin's book of numbers. The goblin wrinkles his nose.

Victor thinks he remembers this one from when he paid the owl. "Try your left front pocket, Mr. Hagrid," he suggests diffidently, reaching up to the counter to clean the miscellaneous pocket contents off the goblin's ledger.

He looks there and finds it: a tiny golden key. "Thanks!" he says, and holds it up.

The goblin looks at it closely. "That seems to be in order."

"An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore," he says importantly, throwing out his chest. "It’s about the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen."

The goblin reads the letter carefully. "Very well," he says, handing it back to Hagrid.

He's almost got everything back into the pockets it came from - there, that's the last crumb. He looks apologetically up at the goblin.

The goblin peers down at Victor suspiciously but doesn't comment. "I will have someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!"

Griphook is, apparently, yet another goblin. Hagrid follows him to a door, and he holds it open for them. On the other side, there is a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It slopes steeply downward and there are little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistles and a small cart comes hurtling up the tracks toward them. Hagrid climbs in with some difficulty.

Okay then. Victor gets in the cart.