Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard

by Tom Felton

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.

Sometimes it feels hard to live in a world where people are so quick to judge, to doubt, to question intentions. Tom doesn’t do that. I know that, even if I’ve made a mistake, he’ll understand that my intention was good. I know that he’ll always believe me. Even when he doesn’t have the whole picture, he’ll never doubt that I’m coming from a good place and will have done my very best. That’s true friendship, and to be seen and loved like that is one of the great gifts of my life.

I’m not Draco. Draco’s not me. But the dividing line is not black and white. It’s painted in shades of grey.

“I’ve always known I was a duck,” she said, “but I’ve spent my whole life being told I was a chicken. Every time I try to say ‘quack’ the world tells me that I have to say ‘cluck.’ I even started believing that I was a chicken and not a duck. Then we started hanging out and I found somebody else who quacked. And that’s when I thought: To hell with them, I really am a duck!”

To anybody else, Emma’s story about the chicken and the duck might have sounded like gobbledegook. Not to me. I understood exactly what she meant. She meant that we were kindred spirits, that we understood each other and that we helped each other make sense of ourselves and of our lives. We’ve been quacking ever since. I know for certain that I’ll always have Emma’s back, and that she’ll have mine too.

Emma has taught me so many valuable lessons over the years, most importantly: don’t always follow the herd, never underestimate the power of a woman and, whatever you do, keep quacking.

that it’s our choices, not our abilities, that show us what we truly are.

An older actor once told me a line that he sometimes uses when people recognise or half-recognise him: Do you have any idea who I think I am? It can be a charming way to ease that awkward moment, but it hints at a deeper truth, too: often, those of us in the public eye have no idea who we think we are. Our sense of self is skewed. Our vision is blurred.