The morning sun shined as Harry woke up and stretched his limbs. After making his bed and eating various sweets he bought in Alley for breakfast he reread his replies one more time, before rolling them, and putting in a letter holder on Hedwig's leg.

The holder was just something he bought yesterday in the trunk shop - Harry was not sure how exactly it worked, but Hedwig seemed happy to carry a lighter load and could skillfully pull out letters one by one as needed. After testing its new trinket, the owl let out a hoot sound, then grabbed a large cookie from the remains of Harry's breakfast and took off to the skies.

Harry just smiled as he watched his familiar quickly fly away and only moved his eyes away when not even a dot was visible in the morning sky, he had a busy day ahead.

The knight bus ride to Diagon Alley took longer than usual - mainly because Harry decided to take a scenic route. He figured he was a bit behind Daphne and wanted to catch up, it would undoubtedly be useful in the future - being able to apparate on any street in britain. Throughout the journey he was feeling a bit sad - he needed to keep looking outside, so he could not read at the same time and there was no one to chat with. It's not like the bus was empty - but there were just the same drunkards or homeless looking people as last time. At least the hot chocolate was tasty. He faintly smiled and just enjoyed the scenery of his homeland.

Diagon Alley was as fun as always, yet Harry already visited most of the shops last time, and the few ones remaining did not really attract him. He did visit the apothecary to buy a bulk of potion ingredients - potion making did not need any wand waving - hence he could just practise that at home, he was not that great at potions but he never exploded or melted his cauldron… yet. And if it did happen - he figured he would just experience a wizarding world court for the first time, and then the 'restart' would just fix things… Nothing too serious.

Thinking of Sirius he smiled, his godfather was more than happy to arrange a visit with him, saying he would lead him to a secure place he's staying… yet not being able to write it out on paper as it would expose it if the letter gets intercepted. Such a fascinating place, Harry was excited to visit it with his godfather, he just needed to be on lookout for his padfoot form showing up near Dursleys - at least that's how he understood his mischievous godfather's cryptic words.

Finally reaching the end of the Diagon Alley, Harry turned to the side - there was a signpost pointing back to the way he came from, another pointed to knockturn alley, yet another to pure alley, green alley and many more, Harry wondered how come wizards were always speaking about Diagon Alley only - surely he heard Knockturn alley was a place of evil, yet the kindest person he knew - Hagrid - was a frequent customer there, surely it can't be that bad.

He did not take too long to decide - he would eventually explore them all anyway, so better just to start somewhere. He quickly re-planned his day - he would explore Knockturn Alley until noon, then he would go over the Mud Alley - it was apparently where all muggle-borns were ushered to, rarely ever allowed to set up shops in most alleys like Diagon, they just created their own alley - though those pureblood snobs probably named it as such, he mused.

Then in the evening he had an arranged meeting with Daphne at the entrance of Green alley - apparently owned by Greengrass family, there Daphne would give him a tour, even introduce him to some places where young wizards were actually allowed to train magic - with adult supervision of course, heck it even had courses offered, one of them being apparition - which Daphne said she was going to enrol in. Then they would eat dinner, chat, and go for another knight bus scenic route back home.

Harry smirked, inwardly musing 'it kind of looks… like a date', he made a mental note to tease Daphne about it later.

Walking through the knockturn alley it seemed… not as interesting as it was during his first year. His pocket trunk had quite a few anti-theft wards so all those crooks that were eying him like candy during his first time there… just cursed seeing his pocket trunk and simply passed by.

There were not many shops inside, and the rumours of it being a dark wizard place were clearly somewhat exaggerated - sure there were some shops which sold somewhat suspicious looking things, perhaps borderline illegal things like temporary love potions being passed as 'prank items'.

Harry did not particularly enjoy this alley - he still had bad memories about the place, yet he still found some useful things inside. His growing library inside the pocket trunk got expanded with some assorted spellbooks from various countries around the world. Some of them might even look dark for others, but as someone who saw a first year almost kill a troll with a simple wingardium leviosa Harry did not really think spells like bone removal were truly dark - perhaps it was used for cooking. Though its combat capabilities were not to be underestimated - he shuddered remembering Lockheart as the 'teacher' vanished his whole arms bones. It was such a simple spell, yet one hit and you're disarmed for at least a couple of days… a hit to the non limb part would immobilise the opponent or perhaps even kill them outright.

Still he was happy about his purchases, perhaps it would help to last longer against that Albus monster at the start of the loop as he did feel the itch to improve his fighting skills. Perhaps beating the old twinkle was out of his talent's reach, but he wished to at least get a single good hit in, which he somehow never managed to do in all the loops.

The noon was quickly approaching so Harry took a peek to the las shop in the alley - it was very rundown, even the sign was broken, he almost passed it by thinking it was just someones house, yet a small worn out piece of paper had open written on it so he pushed open the door and an old bell dingled. Surprisingly it was a bookstore - in fact the first one he found in the alley, other books he got were just miscellaneous items inside, not proper bookstores by any means.

He glanced over the titles, as there were only ten or so bookshelves, he could afford to spend time reading all titles and then if he ever wished to read some of them he could just come here to buy it - with his occlumency skills it was easy to remember even the placement of the books, never mind the titles.

So far most of the shelves had just Hogwarts school books and other famous old classics like wizard fairy tales, yet the books were quite old, you could not see a single Lockheart non-sense 'textbook', there were books used in Hogwarts like half a century ago or so. Still most of the textbooks… were the same content as his current ones, perhaps the language was redacted a bit.

Yet the next section surprised him quite a bit - there were books on occlumency and legilimency even! He was quite sure those were quite illegal to sell so openly, but still what auror would even come to this ruined down and nameless shop?

Curious, he picked a few books on occlumency and gave them a flip - he felt his eyes get slightly watery as he regretted the fact he did not read this a decade ago… it would have saved him years building up his mind defences, he still knew most things in the book and even more, but it took him hundreds even thousands of confrontations with Albus to self-learn them, heck he could write a book on his own now, still having such a good textbook here was a good find. Not wanting to lose himself in the books, as he still had plans for the day, Harry just picketed the whole section on mind arts… which was only a couple dozen books, he could surely spare the galleons.

Going over the other books he found a nice supplementary potions book which actually explained what each ingredient is doing, he was hardly surprised that greasy bat never mentioned this book to students… at least non-slytherin ones. He also found a few duelling books and an even older dark arts textbook - apparently seven decades ago the subject was called dark arts and defence against them, he could hardly carry more books on his own as he felt it was impolite to shove non purchased goods to his private trunk so he went to look for the counter to checkout.

There was a wrinkly old man by the counter, who just glanced over the books, not showing any special reaction by seeing dozens of illegal ones among them. He just stated a price, quite a steep one, which Harry paid, not being stingy with money - his spending was quite meaningless as when loop restarts his money would refill, yet the knowledge gained would remain in his mindscape.

He pocketed his purchased books and strolled out of the shop and out of the alley - it was already noon, and the meals offered at knockturn looked quite unappetizing - most of the meals had almost raw, bloody meat, perhaps this is where people like Lupin ate their meals? Harry mused as he walked.

Having eaten his tasty lunch at Leaky Cauldron, Harry headed back to the end of the alley, this time he took a turn to the so-called 'mud alley'.

After a few minutes of walking the alley greeted Harry's eyes - it was quite unusual, not like usual wizarding places. The building looked… quite modern, like freshly built muggle shopping malls. Perhaps pureblood snobs would be against ever setting foot there, but Harry did not mind and entered the first shop that caught his eye - 'magelectrolics for everyday life'.

Inside it was like in a muggle shop - everything looked clean, items neatly arranged in shelves, with some sort of a tag attached, perhaps for anti-theft, the boy wondered as an excited voice greeted him.

After a quick chat with the shopkeeper, Harry was taken to a tour of the shop and its specialties. The name actually combined the words magical and electrical and tried to make electrical things remade with magical parts, like the muggle car Mr. Weasley drove.

They also researched things in reverse - mainly creating various medicines for common illnesses by recreating some simple potions with non-magical ingredients. While the shop was a massive success on muggle side, there in mud alley, it was not often visited - wizards preferred apparition or floo network or even brooms rather than fancy cars. Even if muggleborns bought a car, they usually bought a non-magical one, still there were quite a few fancy trinkets that Harry liked.

In the end, Harry bought a music player which could save sounds, replay them and even connect to the wizarding radio or muggle radio waves - it was interesting to note that while electronics went haywire in the presence of magic, radio waves seemed to work fine. He smiled as he fiddled with earphones attached to the player - it looked just like a muggle one, now he could enjoy some music on his morning bus rides.

After a while he took off to another shop - this time it was an actual shopping mall, yet it had wizarding items, food potion ingredients and the like, while initially weirded out by the strangeness of it all, the boy liked the idea of just having one place to shop everything you needed.

A few abandoned buildings later he saw a tailor shop, which unlike madam malkin, made various muggle clothes - which looked way more comfortable than the so called wizarding robes which most witches and wizards he saw in Diagon Alley usually wore.

Harry bought an expensive jumper and pants, apparently made of dragon skin, hence somewhat magic resistant - of course not as much as real dragon skin as it was not alive. He also picked quite a few casual clothes charmed with cleaning charms and self repair charms, they even had growing charms which would let clothes grow to adult size as he aged.

Eventually the exploration came to an end as the boy hurried back to the cross-roads.

He had an appointment to meet.

Harry was walking as fast as he could, though not pushing himself too much, he did not want to appear out of breath.

Reaching the intersection he breathed a sigh of relief - it seemed Daphne was not here yet, he took a glance at his wristwatch he bought in mud alley - it looked like there were still a few minutes left and as he looked up he could already see familiar white haired girl walking towards him. He waited for her to get close enough, then smiled and raised his hand for a greeting wave.

"Hello Daphne"

"Hello Harry, did you wait for a long time?"

"No, I just got there recently, I was exploring Mud Alley before" - he noted that the girl's bright smile did not falter - she did not seem to care that Mud Alley was run by muggleborns.

"Ah yes I remember that place, it had some quite novel things, the clothes are especially comfy in there, but anyways let's go, I would give you a tour over Green Alley as I promised!"

"Sure" - Harry grinned - "let the date begin!"

A bright red coloured the girl's cheeks, she elbowed him in the side - "it's not a date! Just an… outing with a friend"

"Sure, whatever you say"

The boy still had a cheeky grin as he walked beside the embarrassed girl. Even though she said it was not a date she looked more beautiful than their chance encounter yesterday. Rather than some dark grey robes that blended with bus crowd, now she wore a beautiful light green dress, quite matching with her green eyes and blonde hair.

The green alley turned out to be something in between Diagon Alley and Mud Alley - the buildings were mostly the same style as in Diagon, yet there were some shops there and there which clearly had newer muggle shop designs.

It had a surprisingly large amount of shops devoted to potions and herbology, as Daphne explained, that was her family's main business - their bloodline somehow made them more talented in those fields. With her suggestions Harry easily found a fancy plant which Neville would surely enjoy having - it would be for his house visit in a few days,, then the tour continued.

They visited a book shop - where a few dozens more of interesting titles entered Harry's pocket-trunk, he especially enjoyed a thick book Daphne showed to him which explained school potions for all years in very detailed manner. He could not wait to see greasy bats expression when he aced his potions assignments.

Moving on it was like Daphne was picking useful things for Harry as his money stack dwindled, but he enjoyed the shopping spree - he did feel like he needed all those things, like unmeltable cauldron, a wand holster, history books about wizards in general not just about britain and more purchases.

Daphne seemed to enjoy the tour as well as a smile was always plastered on her face. Eventually the tour came to an end as they reached some fancy building titled 'Young wizards summer training centre'.

"So Harry, will you be taking apparition classes… together with me?"

"Sure, it sounds like such an usual skill to learn, and I certainly enjoy your company"

The girl blushed hearing his last words and nodded while passing him an empty registration form.

They registered for the class while Harry also registered for some early morning duelling classes and mind art defence classes - Daphne looked like she wanted to join those as well, but apparently she took those last year and could not repeat that again.

As the first apparition class was still quite a few days in the future, the duo went for some dinner in a nearby restaurant. The delicious meal was accompanied with a long chat as they discussed various topics together. Then they rode the scenic route on a knightly bus together and eventually came a time to part ways.

"It was nice spending time with you, Harry"

"Likewise, Daphne. Let's meet up again some time, perhaps before the first apparition lesson?"

"Yes, I would like that" - it was a bit dark to see, but as her cheeks darkened Harry assumed she was blushing again.

"What do you say about going to some muggle places? We could watch a movie together… and eat some muggle food, have you ever eaten a pizza?"

"That… sounds interesting. The movies you mentioned always fascinated me, I would enjoy watching one. But what is a pizza?"

Harry admired her puzzled expression, but his own face was agape in shock - "Pizza is one of the tastiest foods I ever ate, it's a crime to never try it out!"

"I wouldn't mind trying out some new cuisine… "

"Okay! See you tomorrow on the bus then?"

"Yes, see you soon!"

The duo parted ways once again, as Harry happily hummed and walked back to Privet Drive.

Near the doors he stopped as a large black dog seemed to be waiting for him in the bushes - it woofed and looked at him with a mischievous smile, he hold out his paw, and on it was a bus ticket, a muggle bus ticket going to Grimmauld Place district, tomorrow morning.

Harry never heard of the place, but he was happy to see his godfather again, he kneeled and hugged the dog who returned the gesture. Then Harry grabbed the ticket and nodded.

"Thanks Padfoot, I will be there tomorrow"

The black dog just woofed again, then hugged Harry one more time, before disappearing in the black of night. Harry climbed back into his room with a happy look on his face, it looks like he needed to replan the next day.