Flourish & Blotts sells a great variety of magic-related books, including textbooks for Hogwarts courses and other books of general magical interest. In the back there is a corner devoted solely to Divination, which includes a small table stacked with titles like Predicting the Unpredictable: Insulate Yourself against Shocks and Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul. Another small display contains the book Death Omens: What to Do When You Know the Worst is Coming.

There is usually a display of gold-embossed spell books the size of paving slabs in the window, but in Prisoner of Azkaban, the front window holds an iron cage filled with hundreds of copies of The Monster Book of Monsters. To deal with the vicious books, set for the third year Care of Magical Creatures class by Hagrid, the harassed manager had to gear up with thick gloves and jab at them with a knobbly walking stick, as the books tend to rip each other apart. The manager says that he had thought he had seen the worst when "we bought two hundred copies of The Invisible Book of Invisibility - cost a fortune and we never found them..."

Madam Malkin's is a clothing shop next to the bookstore, Flourish & Blotts. It sells robes and other clothing, including the standard Hogwarts-required plain black work robes, and dress robes. Madam Malkin, a squat witch who wears mauve robes, and her assistants will tailor the robes to fit right in her shop.

The Magical Menagerie is a magical creature shop that, besides selling magical creatures, also offers advice on animal care and health. The shop is very cramped, noisy and smelly, due to every inch being covered with cages. Among the creatures in the Magical Menagerie are enormous purple toads, a firecrab, poisonous orange snails, a fat white rabbit that can turn into a silk top hat and back, cats of every colour, ravens, Puffskeins, and a cage of sleek black rats that play skipping games with their tails.

Ollivander's is a fine wands shop described as narrow and shabby, with a sign that reads Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC in peeling gold letters over the door. The only display in the window overlooking Diagon Alley is a single wand lying on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window. Within, there are countless narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling and a spindly legged chair.

The Cauldron Shop sells all different varieties and sizes of cauldrons, including copper, brass, pewter, silver, self-stirring, collapsible, and solid gold.