Lyrics are Starkid's, story is Jo's - The only things that are mine are all the crap you don't recognise.

This story is a precursor to The Place Where It All Started, but you don't need to read this to read that or vise-versa. It follows Althea Potter through her first year at Hogwarts with her friends. Any students whom you don't recognise are characters who made no-line or few-line appearances in the Harry Potter films, such as Bem, who was in Prisoner of Azkaban and named in the credits ("It's like trying to catch smoke. It's like trying to catch smoke with your bear hands"), and Kellah, who spoke no lines but was credited in the credits. Only their parents, siblings, family, etc. are mine. I picked them all from the Harry Potter wiki. You can find pictures showing how I imagine them, Althea, and other objects in this story in a link on my profile.

There are exact selections from the books here, but this story only follows the basic plots and necessary subplots. If you're one of those people who hates when writers quote the books, then this story may not be for you.

Chapter One: Diagon Alley

And so many nights I'd pray

For a better life, and a better day

But I never thought that it'd come true

It's finally here and I don't know what to do...

I used to dream about it

But never schemed or counted

On fantasies or wishes

It breaks a (wo)man to see what (s)he misses…

Althea Elizabeth Potter was in quite the conundrum, to say the least.

The past few months of her already strange life had been exceptionally out-of-the-ordinary, something her family, the Dursleys, hated. It had started, Althea supposed, when she, her Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and cousin Dudley had gone to the zoo for her cousin's birthday. Althea had been innocently looking at the animals when she came upon a boa constrictor. At the time, she had not thought it at all strange to talk to the animal, apologising for her cousin's rude behaviour before and asking if it missed its family. Then, when Dudley's friend Piers had called Dudley over because the snake was moving and Dudley pushed Althea on the ground, it had happened. The glass had disappeared completely from the snake's cage, and Dudley had fallen head-over-heels into the snake's pool, while the boa constrictor slithered out, hissing a thanks to Althea, and escaped.

Even though the young girl protested that she hadn't done anything, she was locked in her tiny bedroom (which was actually the cupboard under the stairs) until summertime. The day Althea was allowed out, something even stranger than talking snakes and vanishing glass happened.

A letter came in the post – for Althea.

She had never in her life gotten a letter, and so naturally when she was trying to read it, it was snatched from her by her uncle, who promptly read it, turned green, and kicked her and Dudley out of the room. What followed was a string of events Althea was only beginning to understand: first, she was moved from her cupboard to Dudley's second bedroom, as if the Dursleys were trying to be nice to her. Then three more letters came the next day, so her uncle took a day from work and nailed up the letter slot. More letters came the day after, hidden in the eggs and stuffed through the downstairs windows and through cracks in the doors. Her uncle nailed these up as well, and by Sunday they were all trapped in the house. Althea had been forlornly thinking of all the chances she had missed to get at those letters when suddenly they came pouring in from the fireplace by the hundreds. Althea was still unable to snatch one, and her uncle proclaimed they were leaving. After driving all day with no sign of a destination, Uncle Vernon had gotten them two hotel rooms in Cokeworth, and the morning found the hotel manager saying she had about a hundred letters for a 'Miss Althea Potter', which Uncle Vernon took and destroyed. They drove that day as well, until Vernon rented them a hut out in the middle of the sea, which was miserable and cold. It was exactly midnight – Althea's eleventh birthday – when a giant had broken down the hut door, apologised, put it back up, and then declared Althea to be a witch.

You can probably see why she was still in a bit of a shocked state. The giant, a kind man named Hagrid who worked at the school for witches and wizards, which was called Hogwarts, explained that Althea's parents had been great witches and wizards as well. He told her the story of why she was with her aunt and uncle in the first place, and why she had the strange, lightning-bolt shaped scar on her forehead – a dark wizard named Voldemort had come to kill Althea and her parents when she was a baby, but he couldn't kill her for reasons no one knew. And even stranger, Voldemort had seemingly been destroyed that night, and hadn't been seen since. This, apparently, made Althea famous in the Wizarding World. People thought her powerful, a miracle, even a saviour.

It was all quite intimidating to say the least.

The morning after Hagrid told her all this, he took her to a pub in London with a magic brick wall in the back that opened up into a street filled with witches and wizards to get her school things.

Althea was still very rattled from the crowds of people that had swarmed upon her in the pub, The Leaky Cauldron, as soon as they realised who she was, and now there was a street before her – the most amazing street she had ever seen.

"Welcome," said Hagrid, "to Diagon Alley."'

He grinned at Althea's amazement. They stepped through the archway. Althea looked quickly over her shoulder and saw the archway shrink instantly back into solid wall. The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons — All Sizes — Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver — Self-Stirring — Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them.

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

Althea wished she had about eight more eyes. She turned her head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, "Dragon liver, sixteen Sickles an ounce, they're mad..."

A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Althea's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it.

"Look," Althea heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —"

Oh my stars, can broomsticks really fly? She wondered wildly.

There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Althea had 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...

"Gringotts," Hagrid announced.

They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was —

"Yeah, that's a goblin," said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. He had told Althea about the creatures who manned Gringotts, and Althea nodded, forcing herself not to look at him differently than she would anyone else.

The goblin was about a head shorter than Althea. H had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed chin and, Althea noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Now they were 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.

"Like I said, yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it," said Hagrid. Althea shivered.

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

"Morning," said Hagrid to a free goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Miss Althea Potter's safe."

"You have her key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere," said Hagrid, and he started emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of mouldy dog biscuits over the goblin's book of numbers. The goblin wrinkled his nose. Althea watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals, gaping and imagining Aunt Petunia's face if she saw those jewels.

"Got it," said Hagrid at last, holding up a tiny golden key. The goblin looked at it closely.

"That seems to be in order."

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

The goblin read the letter carefully.

"Very well," he said, handing it back to Hagrid, "I will have someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!"

Griphook was yet another goblin. Once Hagrid had crammed all the dog biscuits back inside his pockets, he and Althea followed Griphook toward one of the doors leading off the hall.

"What's the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen?" Althea asked curiously.

"Can't tell yeh that," said Hagrid mysteriously. "Very secret. Hogwarts business. Dumbledore's trusted me. More'n my job's worth ter tell yeh that."

Althea nodded, slightly disappointed, but expecting an answer of that sort. Griphook held the door open for them. Althea thanked the goblin, who gaped at her as if he'd never heard the phrase before,

They were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward them. They climbed in — Hagrid with some difficulty — and were off.

At first they just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. Althea tried to remember; left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn't steering. Althea had never moved this fast before; she had never gone to an amusement park or anything of the sort, and she would have expected to be scared, but she wasn't at all. In fact, it was wonderful and exhilarating. Althea's eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but she kept them wide open. Once, she thought she saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon (Hagrid had mentioned that there were rumoured to be dragons guarding some vaults), but too late — they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.

"I can never remember," Althea called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "what's the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?"

"Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid. "An' don' ask me questions just now, I think I'm gonna be sick."

He did look very green, and Althea winced in sympathy. When the cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall, Hagrid got out and had to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling.

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Althea gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins, columns of silver, and heaps of little bronze things.

"All yours," smiled Hagrid.

All Althea's — it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from her faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Althea cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to her, buried deep under London, yet she had never had her own shirt or a toy to play with.

Hagrid helped Althea pile some of it into a bag.

"The gold ones are Galleons," he explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine bronze Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. Right, that should be enough fer a couple o' terms, we'll keep the rest safe for yeh." he turned to Griphook. "Vault seven hundred and thirteen now, please, and can we go more slowly?"

"One speed only," said Griphook, and Althea thought she saw a slight smile on the goblin's face.

They were going even deeper now and gathering speed. The air became colder and colder as they hurtled round tight corners. They went rattling over an underground ravine, and Althea leaned over the side to try to see what was down at the dark bottom, but Hagrid groaned and pulled her back by her shirt, making Althea giggle.

Vault seven hundred and thirteen had no keyhole.

"Stand back," said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away.

"If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they'd be sucked through the door and trapped in there," said Griphook.

"How often do you check to see if anyone's inside?" Althea asked worriedly.

"About once every ten years," said Griphook with a rather nasty grin.

Something really extraordinary had to be inside this top security vault, Althea was sure, and she leaned forward eagerly, expecting to see fabulous jewels at the very least, or perhaps some strange magical artefact — but at first she thought it was empty. Then she noticed a grubby little package wrapped up in brown paper lying on the floor. Hagrid picked it up and tucked it deep inside his coat. Althea longed to know what it was, but knew better than to ask.

"Come on, back in this infernal cart, and don't talk to me on the way back, it's best if I keep me mouth shut," said Hagrid.

One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Althea didn't know where to run first now that she had a bag full of money. She didn't have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that she was holding more money than she'd had in her whole life — more money than even Dudley had ever had. She could buy her own clothes and books about the Wizarding World and –

"Might as well get yer uniform," said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Althea, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts."

He did still look a bit sick, so Althea found herself heading for Madam Malkin's by herself.