Emma Watson poses for a photograph.

Gulf Today Report

Emma Watson, more famous as the fresh-faced, lively and savvy Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, is back on Instagram, much to the delight of her followers. The actress, who turned 33 on April 15, was away from the social media domain since December last year. After her return to the online platform, she treated her Insta family to 5 monochrome pictures and one coloured picture.

She says she stepped away from ‘my life’ for the past couple of years.

Informing her fans what she was up to, she wrote, "This is 33. Holy moly. Before 29 I hadn't even heard of a Saturn Return as a concept. Let's just say that now I am well acquainted. " And, pray, what else did she do during the withdrawal from the social media limelight?

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She learnt how to surf “badly”, ridden horses, done “a lot of therapy” and “said goodbye to my Grandma and Grandpa”.

“I cut my thumb nail off on both hands trying to cook for myself and then was only able to do things one-handed for months,” she wrote. “I felt really sad and really p••••d off about a lot of things. I learnt more about love and being a woman…”

She even started a women's environmental investment fund., dabbled in Pickleball with @sugarrayleonard and even played golf and then tried to make all her friends learn too. She even directed her first commercial, according to the Independent.

Emma concluded her note with these words, "These pictures were actually taken on my birthday last year, but I wasn't ready to come out of my Covid Cocoon. Today I feel (butterfly  emoticons)."

Twenty-two years ago, in 2001, the first film in the Harry Potter franchise, ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (released in America and India as ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’) was released, worldwide. It catapulted the three leading stars of the film – Daniel Radcliffe as a famous wizard in the eponymous role, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, then a tween, as Hermione Granger.

The movie was a mountain of a success, catapulting the then three youngsters to international stardom. There were seven sequels after that, ending in 2011.

 “I could never let Hermione go – she is my hero!,” Watson said in a statement from the Warner Bros. film studio. “I love her too much and love what playing her has meant to me.”

Interestingly, Emma had a crush on her co-star Tom Felton – she was just 9 and he 11 when they met for the audition of the ‘Philosopher’s Stone.’

Fans of the franchise have always rooted for a romantic relationship between the two actors, but Felton had no such feelings for the beautiful and doe-eyed star.

 “I’ve always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear. That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times." He later adds: “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."