Emma Watson was 10 when she started filming Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Tom Felton was 13.
Somewhere between on-set tutoring and daily call sheets, Hermione fell for Draco Malfoy, at least off camera.
Both actors have talked about it for more than a decade: on talk shows, in the 2022 reunion special and in Felton’s memoir.
Below are their words, with a link to each source.
Who Was Emma Watson’s Hogwarts Crush?
Tom Felton, the boy who played Draco Malfoy. He is 3 years older than Watson, and she has called him her first crush.
In 2011, the year the final film came out, she told Seventeen that during the first 2 movies she “had a huge crush on Tom Felton”.
“He totally knows. We talked about it, we still laugh about it. We are really good friends now, and that’s cool.“
A year later, on The Jonathan Ross Show, she placed the crush between the ages of 10 and 12.
@Getty
Her explanation was short: he was a bad guy, a few years older, and “he had a skateboard and that just did it really”.
The Drawing That Started It
Watson told the full story in Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, which premiered on HBO Max on January 1, 2022.
The young cast had school lessons on set. One day the assignment was to draw what God looked like, and according to Watson, “Tom had drawn a girl with a backward cap on a skateboard” (The Digital Fix).
That drawing did it. “I just fell in love with him,” she said.
Emma Watson attends the 2011 ELLE Style Awards at the Grand Connaught Rooms on February 14, 2011 in London – @Getty
After that she started checking the schedule. She would “look for his number on the call sheet, he was number seven,” and a day with Tom on it was a better day.
Did Tom Felton Know About The Crush?
He did. In the reunion he said he was in the hair and make-up chair when “someone said something along the lines of, ‘Yeah, she had a crush on you'”.
His memoir adds the details: the person who told him was Lisa Tomblin, the films’ hair designer, he was 15, Watson was 12, and he laughed it off.
The age gap meant he saw her as a little sister.
Tom Felton attends the British Vogue And Tiffany & Co. Celebrate Fashion And Film Party 2023 – @Getty
His reaction, in his words: “I became very protective over her”.
What Rupert Grint Saw On Set
Ron Weasley noticed something.
In a November 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight, while promoting his Apple TV+ series Servant, Grint said: “There was a little bit of a spark”.
He played it down right away, comparing it to a playground romance between kids. About himself he joked: “I didn’t have any sparks. I was spark-free.”
Did Emma Watson And Tom Felton Ever Date?
No. Both have said so many times.
Watson, in the reunion special: “Nothing has ever, ever, ever happened romantically with us. We just love each other.”
She also explained why their friendship felt different from the others on set: “Tom was the one I could often be more vulnerable with”.
In 2021, Entertainment Tonight asked Felton about the years of rumors.
Emma Watson attends the Lancome and Emma Watson Pre-BAFTA party at the ‘Roses By…’ exhibition at The Savoy Hotel on February 10, 2012 – Dave Benett/@Getty
His answer: “that’s a Slytherin-Gryffindor thing rather than a Tom and Emma thing” (NBC Washington).
And when Watson told British Vogue in 2019 that she was “self-partnered,” Felton backed the term in a chat with MailOnline: “I’m in the same category, to be honest with you, quite happily self-partnered”.
What Tom Wrote In Beyond The Wand
Felton’s memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, came out in October 2022 and detailed more than any interview.
They first met at auditions, when he was 11 and she was 9.
He admits the start was rough: “My relationship with Emma did not start well.”
Over the years his feelings changed. “I’ve always had a secret love for Emma,” he wrote, and he added right after that it was not the romance fans hoped for.
His girlfriend at that time saw it immediately. She “knew straight away that there was something unspoken between us.”
His defense? “I remember using the familiar old line: ‘I love her like a sister'”.
Tom Felton attends Universal Studios’ “Wizarding World of Harry Potter Opening” at Universal Studios Hollywood on April 5, 2016 – @Getty
His final word on it: “I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma”.
He wrote that he loved and admired her as a person in a way he never managed to explain to anyone.
Emma’s Foreword: “We’re Soulmates”
Watson wrote the foreword to the book. Looking back at the first films, she remembered following him around set “like a puppy, desperate for [Felton’s] attention.”
She also listed the questions people keep asking her about him, like “You must have drunkenly made out, just once!”
Her answer to all of them: “It’s one of the purest loves I can think of. We’re soulmates.”
Emma Watson attends the National Movie Awards at the Royal Festival Hall on September 28, 2007 in London – @Getty
About the actor who played Hogwarts’ biggest snob, she wrote that he has “a heart the size of a planet.”
Where They Stand Now
Right after the reunion aired, Watson told British Vogue that the two of them talk most weeks, and that they find the fan frenzy about them sweet.
In the memoir, Felton closes the subject with loyalty: he will always have Emma’s back, and she will always have his.
For me, the call sheet is the best detail in this whole story.
A kid scanning a production schedule for number 7 is about as real as a first crush gets, and 20 years later both of them tell it without a trace of awkwardness.
I am Bulgarea Candin Stefan, and I founded FamousPeopleToday.com in 2018. I’m using my bachelor’s degree in economics and 9 years of experience in blogging to guide millions of people through the incredibly complex world of celebrity net worths.