The full Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts made its debut on January 1, 2022 on HBO Max, but the Daily Mail shared some special moments between the cast in advance. While discussing their time on set together, Emma Watson shared her memory of ‘falling in love’ with her co-star Tom Felton. At the time that they were cast as Hermione and Draco, Watson was 11-years-old and Felton was 14, so she was doomed to be seen as the ‘little sister.’
‘I walked into the room where we were having tutoring,’ Watson said. ‘The assignment that had been given was to draw what you thought God looked like, and Tom had drawn a girl with a backward cap on a skateboard.’
She continued, ‘And I just don’t know how to say it – I just fell in love with him. I used to come in every day and look for his number on the call sheet, it was number seven, and if his name was on the call sheet, it was an extra exciting day. He was three years above me and so for him he was like, “You’re like my little sister.”
Most of the cast was subjected to dating rumours over the many years it took to film all eight Harry Potter movies, but Watson insists her crush was never reciprocated—though Felton says he knew all about it.
‘I think I was in the hair and make-up chair and someone said something along the lines of, “Yeah, she had a crush on you,”‘ he said during the reunion interview. ‘I became very protective over her. Yeah, I’ve always had a soft spot for her and that continues to this day. There’s always been something that’s like, I don’t know, a kinship.’
They have remained friends over the years, and Watson has often played her school girl crush for laughs in interviews.
‘For the first two movies, I had a huge crush on Tom Felton. He was my first crush. He totally knows,’ she told Seventeen in 2011. ‘We talked about it – we still laugh about it. We are really good friends now, and that’s cool.’
Watson is currently dating businessman Leo Robinton, and they’ve been together for over a year now.
