Harry Potter Star Tom Felton Addressed Rumors of a ‘No Dating Pact’ With Emma Watson

Following the revelations from Tom Felton’s memoir, some fans only have more questions about his relationship with Emma Watson.

In a new interview with Access Hollywood, Felton spoke further about his bond with his Harry Potter costar. “Emma and I have always been very dear to each other, but didn’t start that way,” he told Access Hollywood’s Kit Hoover. “She was nine when we first met and I was 12. And I think I was a bit of a cocky teenager going on 25. But yeah, we’ve been dear friends all our lives and she was very encouraging, actually, for me to continue writing these stories down to make them into a book.”

Felton went deeper into their rough start and eventual close friendship in Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard. “I’ve always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear,” he wrote, per the Daily Mail. “That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times.”

While Watson has openly discussed her former crush on Felton, the Draco Malfoy actor has been shutting down gossip about their relationship status since he was 15 years old. “Rumors started to abound that there was more to our relationship than we were letting on. I denied that I liked her in that way, but the truth was different,” Felton wrote. “My girlfriend at the time knew straightaway that there was something unspoken between us. I remember using the familiar old line ‘I love her like a sister.’ But there was more to it than that.”

He continued, “I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anybody else…. We were kindred spirits. I know for certain I’ll always have Emma’s back and she’ll always have mine too.”

During the Access Hollywood interview, Hoover asked if the pair ever made a pact to keep their relationship platonic. “No definitely not. None of us had that pact,” Felton said of the entire cast. There was chemistry but no one acted on it as far as I know.”

In the foreword of his memoir, Emma Watson described Tom Felton as her “soulmate.” 

“For more than 20 years now we’ve loved each other in a special way,” she wrote, in part. “I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me, ‘You must have drunkenly made out, just once!’ ‘You must have kissed!’ ‘There must be something!’ But what we have is far deeper than that. It’s one of the purest loves I can think of. We’re soulmates, and we’ve always had each other’s backs. I know we always will.”