Do I get to bring things back with me? If so I would choose Honeydukes or Flourish and Blotts. If I just get to observe for half an hour I’d want to either be in the Gryffindor common room or in the stands during a quiddich game.
I would like to stand on the train platform in London right next to the entrance to platform 91/2 on the day the Hogwart’s Express leaves for school. I would like to observe all the other muggles not seeing the students moving through the wall.
I know this lack-of-observing is possible without magical assistance because I have had the good fortune to observe deer standing in the woods 10 yards from a walking/running trail. The deer stood quietly with only their heads moving back and forth like spectators at a tennis match while a minimum of 30 people either walked or ran by them without ever seeing the deer.
I was leaning against a tree on the other side of the deer (4 of them) trying to not laugh out loud. At one point one of the walkers (a loud talker) asked her friend if there really were animals in the woods, because she just never saw any!
The best place is obviously Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes - where else are you going to see the most amazing things in a short period of time?
Second choice: Room of Requirement (assuming I get to walk back and forth in the corridor and require something in particular), the “students want to hide something here” version. Of course the Room of Requirement doesn’t exist any more, right? Or is it only the “hide something here” version of the Room of Requirement that was destroyed?
Third Choice: Hogwarts Banquet Hall during a beginning of school feast. See the sorting, see the food magically appearing, see the enchanted ceiling.
Fourth Choice: Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries. Except that I’m afraid I wouldn’t survive the visit.
Fifth Choice: Quidditch World Cup, box seating. (Something worth seeing, the only reason it’s not number one is that I can’t help but feel that I have a good picture in my mind already of what a quidditch game would look like.)
Riddle House - some english manor, not too exciting. Now if you said the Black house, or the Malfoy house …
Shrieking Shack: old dump with busted-up furniture. Also not too exciting.
Cave: you mean the one where I will get drowned by Inferi? No thanks.
Azkaban: big giant prison with a dementor sucking out my brain? Pass.
In front of the Mirror of Erised. I genuinely have no idea what I would see, and it would be interesting to find out. Then when I returned I could start working on it.
The half hour time limit also takes away the danger of staring into it for the rest of my life.