"Soulmates" Emma Watson & Tom Felton Are "Forever Grateful For Each Other"

Emma Watson

2000 — Emma Watson & Tom Felton meet while filming Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Emma Watson is the youngest member of the main HP cast. When Sorcerer’s Stone began filming, the actress was nine years old and madly in love with Tom. You can only imagine why the 12-year-old actor didn’t feel the same. “For the first two movies, I had a huge crush on Tom Felton. He was my first crush,” Emma revealed to Seventeen. “He totally knows. We talked about it — we still laugh about it. We are really good friends now, and that’s cool.”

2003 to 2011 — Tom helps Emma navigate fame as they film Harry Potter

The older and therefore wiser (at least, that’s what they say) Tom Felton took Emma Watson under his wing while filming the Harry Potter movies. According to producer David Heyman, around the time they were filming Prisoner of Azkaban and becoming some of the most recognizable kids in the world, Emma struggled to come to terms with her celebrity status. Cue Tom Felton.

“We were filming Hagrid’s lesson with the Hippogriff. Tom and Emma were really friendly, and Tom really encouraged Emma to engage with the fans in the way that she hadn’t. It was like she needed someone, a friend, to go on that [journey] with her. They were all looking out for each other,” David said.

Tom and Emma's friendship got stronger with each Potter flick they filmed. “I became very protective over her,” Tom said during the Harry Potter reunion special. “I’ve always had a soft spot for her, and that continues to the day.”

2017 — Tom Felton supports Emma Watson at the Beauty and the Beast premiere.

Hermione isn’t the only brunette bookworm Watson’s played; she also starred as Belle in Disney’s live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. Unlike his fellow Harry Potter alum Matthew Lewis, Felton didn’t walk the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere, but he was photographed at the event.

2018 — Emma Watson & Tom Felton hang out in LA

Tom and Emma truthers know exactly where they were the day Emma casually dropped this now-iconic post of her and Tom together on the California coast on Instagram. Tom moved to LA in 2012 after wrapping the Potter series, but it would take more than an ocean to keep him away from Emma. In the post, you can watch the pair tease each other as they share a skateboard.

January 2022 — Tom and Emma speak candidly about their friendship during the Harry Potter reunion special.

Tom Felton and Emma Watson reunited once again for HBO Max’s Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts special. Watson went into detail about her childhood crush on Felton, saying that she “fell in love” with him when he drew God as a girl with a backward cap on a skateboard. She also confirmed that nothing romantic has ever happened between them. “We just love each other,” she said.

October 2022 — Emma writes the foreword to Tom’s book.

Tom Felton's memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, is chock full of Harry Potter references that’ll make even the meanest Muggles smile, but the best Harry Potter Easter egg is on the first page. Emma Watson wrote a super sweet foreword for the book (an apt choice given that she studied English lit in college). In it, she gushes over Tom’s kindness and even says they’re "soulmates." Read the whole thing for yourself here!

“I love Emma so much,” Felton tells Elle Australia. “And I think, I know she loves me. She was the first person to read the earliest drafts of the book, and she was very kind to volunteer and write the forward for it, which I’m forever grateful for.”