Chapter 3-4 The Leaky Cauldron

• For the remaining days until school starts, Harry stays at the Leaky Cauldron. During breakfast each morning there he watches other witches and wizards arguing over articles in Transfiguration Today, Warlocks and Dwarfs. He spends long days exploring Diagon Alley, and outside Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour, watching people showing each other their purchases (among them, someone showing a lunascope) and finishing his essays, sometimes getting help from Florean Fortescue himself.
• Harry has refilled his money bag with gold Galleons, silver Sickles and bronze Knuts from his vault at Gringotts and it requires a lot of self-control not to spend everything at once. He sees a set of Gobstones, a wizarding game, and a moving model of the galaxy in a glass ball, but doesn't buy them. Most tempting is the new broom, the Firebolt, which he sees in Quality Quidditch Supplies.
• The only things Harry ends up buying are new school supplies. He needs potion ingredients, new robes, and new school books, including the ones for the two new subjects Care of Magical Creatures and Divination.
• He goes to Flourish and Blotts to buy his new books. In the store all the copies of The Monster Book of Monsters are kept in a cage since they act like small monsters themselves, snapping at each other and tearing pages. The store manager complains it's the worst case since the bought two hundendred copies of The Invisible Book of Invisibility which "cost a fortune and I never found them!" On his book list there is Unfogging the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky, and the store magager leads Harry into the back of the shop where, on a small table, there are books about fortune-telling like Predicting the Unpredictable: Insulate yourself against Shocks and Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul.
• While the manager is showing Harry a copy of Unfogging the Future and talking about it, Harry's eyes had fallen on a book called Death Omens: What To Do When You Know The Worst Is Coming, on which he sees a big black dog on the cover which looked oddly familiar.
• Harry also buys Intermediate Transfiguration and The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three and then returns to the Leaky Cauldron.
• On the last day of holidays he meets with Ron and Hermione. Ron got a new wand, fourteen inches, willow and containing one Unicorn tail-hair. Hermione has three bags of books; she will have more subjects then Ron and Harry. Among them are Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies.
• Hermione wants to buy an owl with her remaining ten galleons. They go to the magical-creature shop Magical Menagerie. Ron has his rat Scabbers examined there. Scabbers is already old, has a tattered left ear and a missing toe from his front paw. Suddenly a huge orange cat called Crookshanks attacks Scabbers and it takes them nearly ten minutes to find Scabbers after he had had taken refuge under a wastepaper bin. Hermione ends up buying the cat.
• The three find Mr. Weasley sitting in the Leaky Cauldron, reading the Daily Prophet. Mrs. Weasley, Fred, George, Ginny and Percy arrive some minutes later. Next day they will be brought to King's Cross by ministry cars. On the last evening, Harry overhears a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Weasley about him. They are talking about the fact that Sirius Black is presumed to be after Harry and whether or not Harry should know about this. Harry would be safe at Hogwarts while Dumbledore is there. And although Dumbledore isn't fond of them, he will allow the Azkaban guards to be stationed around the entrances of the school grounds