The Apothecary sells potions and potion ingredients. The shop is "fascinating" despite its very bad smell — a mixture of bad eggs and rotten cabbage. The inside includes barrels of slimy stuff on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots and bright powders on the shelves; and bundles of feathers, strings of fangs and snarled claws hanging from the ceiling.

Some of the ingredients available are silver unicorn horns (for twenty-one Galleons each) and glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).

Sells all different varieties and sizes of cauldrons, including copper, brass, pewter, silver, self-stirring, collapsible, and solid gold, according to a sign outside the shop. Hogwarts requires its students to have a size 2 pewter cauldron. The Cauldron Shop is very near to the entrance from The Leaky Cauldron.

They sell owls and supplies like owl treats. The inside is dark and full of a low, soft hooting, rustling and the flickering of "jewel-bright eyes." Among the types of owls sold are Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy.

An office of the wizarding newspaper, The Daily Prophet, as witnessed by the fact that "Letters to the editor should be sent by owl to The Daily Prophet, Diagon Alley, London." The Daily Prophet's known staff include journalist Rita Skeeter and her photographer, Bozo. It should be noted that there is an Evening Prophet and Sunday Prophet.

Florean Fortescue, the founder and shopkeeper, sold ice cream, including sundaes, that could be enjoyed at outdoor tables. Harry spent pleasant hours here working on summer holiday assignments before his third year at Hogwarts. Mr. Fortescue himself helped him with one of his essays about historic witch burnings and supplied him with free sundaes every half hour. The parlour is boarded up, now, and Fortescue has gone missing. What to do!?

Flourish & Blotts sells a great variety of 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.

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.

The Leaky Cauldron is a pub and inn for wizards, offering food, drinks and rooms to rent. It was founded by Daisy Dodderidge (1467–1555) in 1500 "to serve as a gateway between the non-wizarding world and Diagon Alley." The current barman and innkeeper is Tom.

There are a number of rooms available. The inn also has a bar, several private parlour rooms and a large dining room for guests to dine. People often stay at The Leaky Cauldron when they come up to London on shopping trips; there is no mention of other wizarding hotels or inns in Diagon Alley.

The rear of The Leaky Cauldron opens onto a "chilly little courtyard" just off of Diagon Alley, but the pub faces onto Charing Cross Road. As such, it is a means of passing from between Diagon Alley and Muggle London.

Madame Malkin's is a clothing shop next to Flourish & Blotts. It sells robes and other clothing, including the standard Hogwarts-required plain black work robes, and dress robes. Madame 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.

Ollivanders is a magic wand shop described as narrow and shabby, with a sign that reads Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC in peeling gold letters over the door. The only display is a single wand lying on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window and inside there are countless narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling.

Mr. Ollivander, the pale-eyed, white-haired shopkeeper, makes and sells magic wands to witches and wizards as they enter school or break their old wands. He remembers each and every wand he has ever sold. To determine the best wand for a witch or wizard, Mr Ollivander measures various body parts, and then checks the reactions of various wands to the buyer, a process he refers to as "the wand choosing the wizard."