Although a far cry from He Who Must Not Be Named, Tom Felton’s Draco Malfoy was one of the biggest villains in the Harry Potter series. He may have been misunderstood, as he was raised in a world where darkness was pretty much the only tolerable path to be taken, but his sins against the Golden Trio and their friends are not easily excusable. Felton himself is a whole different story. The actor is pretty beloved in the fandom, and has even been known to have stayed close to a lot of the other actors involved in the Harry Potter films, often reminiscing about the times they shared as young actors. In the most recent throw back Felton has shared with us, he adorably shows that off screen, he and Emma Watson are far friendlier than their on-screen counterparts.
While we don’t condone violence at all, who can forget the iconic scene where Emma Watson’s Hermione punches Draco Malfoy in the face? After all, the punch was in the name of Buckbeak, Hagrid’s Hippogriff that Malfoy got sentenced to death. Thankfully Tom Felton and Watson’s relationship off screen is much less explosive, as Felton would never make such transgressions against animal kind. And the actor recently shared a photo to his Instagram of the two as child actors behind the scenes and it’s pretty freaking cute. Check it out:
Peep Dean Thomas to the right! Did we forget to mention him? Honestly, most people do, and it’s a real shame because he’s such an underrated character. Although Alfred Enoch’s Dean Thomas is a minor character, he shows up throughout the Harry Potter series and is pretty spot on about everything whenever he is mentioned. I could go on and on about how Dean Thomas is an unsung hero in the Harry Potter universe, but I digress. But he is such an added bonus to Tom Felton’s throwback with Emma Watson.
Let’s take it back to the main characters here. Tom Felton’s throwback photo, judging by how young the actors look in it, appears to be taken before Hermione’s big punch to Draco’s perfectly sneering face. But no doubt Malfoy is still terrorizing the muggle born witch on screen. You can’t tell any of that in the photo, though, as they are both smiling at the camera next to each other. At this point it’s common knowledge to Potterheads that the child actors did a lot of their homework on set, and it appears that’s what they are doing in this photo. Although they could be going over lines or something of that nature.
I love this photo because it honestly looks so normal, I feel like I could come across it in a stack of a disposable camera’s developed film and I probably wouldn’t even notice I was looking at famous people unless I looked closer. Actually, that’s probably exactly where this photo came from. This is one of Tom Felton’s childhood photos, a lot of which probably have Harry Potter cast members in the background and scattered about.
While Harry Potter fans who grew up on the magic that world brought can revisit those nostalgic feelings by rereading the books or rewatching the films, Tom Felton and other cast members can literally just look back at the majority of their childhood. As a fan myself, it’s wild to imagine being more immersed in that world, but for people like Felton it really was their life. While it’s nice to be able to have sneak peeks back into that world, I can’t help but feel jealous of the Harry Potter kids all over again.
