They're off.

At first they just hurtle through a maze of twisting passages. Left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, it soon becomes untenable to keep track of the path. The rattling cart seems to know its own way, because Griphook isn't steering.

Cold air rushes past them, and at one point there's something that looks a lot like a burst of fire at the end of a passage but they plunge deeper too fast for much more detail to be made out. They pass an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grow from the ceiling and floor.

When the cart stops at last beside a small door in the passage wall, Hagrid gets out and has to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling. He's looking positively green.

Well that wasn't the most pleasant ten minutes of Victor's life, but he's at least much better off than Hagrid.

Griphook unlocks the door. A lot of green smoke comes billowing out, and as it clears, Victor can see the vault's contents: mounds of gold coins, columns of silver, heaps of little bronze Knuts.

"All yours," smiles Hagrid. 

"I don't know how much I'm going to need for all my school supplies," he confesses.

"Ah, we'll get some fer a couple o' terms and change so yeh can buy stuff yeh like." He starts grabbing some gold and silver and bronze and putting it into a bag, not caring much to count. "The gold ones are Galleons," he explains. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough."

That's completely insane, but it seems unproductive to say so.

He turns to Griphook. "Vault seven hundred and thirteen now, please, and can we go more slowly?"

"One speed only," says the goblin.

They board, and the cart starts again. They go even deeper now and gather speed. The air becomes colder and colder as they hurtle round tight corners. They go rattling over an underground ravine, deep enough the bottom's out of sight.

Victor holds onto his bag of money and hopes that Hagrid will be okay.

They soon reach vault seven hundred and thirteen... which has no keyhole.

"Stand back," says Griphook importantly. He strokes the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melts away. "If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they'd be sucked through the door and trapped in there," the goblin says.

...That seems like, as ways to prevent theft go, it could use some improvement. What if someone waited until they knew the vault was going to be opened, and snuck inside through the magic door and waited for a Gringotts goblin to open it for them and then ran away?

Griphook does not respond to his unvoiced thoughts. He stands out of the way, and inside of the vault there is...

Nothing.

Or, wait, there's a grubby little package wrapped up in brown paper lying on the floor, there. Hagrid picks it up and tucks it deep inside his coat.

"Come on, back in this infernal cart," says the giant.

For a moment it looks like the vault has already been robbed, and he's afraid for no good reason that they're going to find some way to blame him -

But no. Everything is fine.

Back in the infernal cart they go, then, Victor with his bag of gold and Hagrid with his grubby little paper package.

One wild cart ride later they stand in the sunlight outside Gringotts.

"Might as well get yer uniform," says Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Victor, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts." He does still look a bit green around the gills.

"No, of course I don't mind," he says. "I'll wait for you here if I finish getting my robes before you get back."

"Nah, I won't be long."

Off he goes.

So Victor goes into the robe shop, somewhat nervously.

Madam Malkin is a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve. 

"Hogwarts, dear?" she says as soon as she spots him. "Got the lot here—another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face is standing on a footstool while a second witch pins up his long black robes. 

He nods shyly at presumably-Madam-Malkin.

She stands Victor on a stool next to the boy, slips a long robe over his head, and begins to pin it to the right length.

"Hello," says the boy. "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," Victor agrees. "Hello."

"My father's next door buying my books and Mother's up the street looking at wands," he says. He has a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully Father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow. Have you got your own broom?"

He shakes his head.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

He shakes his head again.

"I do—Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my House, and I must say, I agree. Know what House you'll be in yet?"