Prepare to be expelliarmed.
Emma Watson is celebrating her 30th birthday, and if that isn't some time trickery right there, we don't know what sort of dark arts are afoot.
The English actress, activist and style maven has expanded on her thespian skill set in recent years, but of course she remains best known for the iconic role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies—which kicked off with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in November 2001, when Watson was only 11 and…
Well, count the things in the world that were different.
Simply enough, the lives of Watson and her fellow young costars would never be the same, that was for sure.
Asked in 2007 what she would one day tell people when they asked what making the Harry Potter films was like, after all was said and done, a teenage Watson told Scholastic that her response would be "what an amazing experience it was, how much it changed my life, and how much I learned from it."
Of course, once she grew up, balancing global fame and the expectations that come with people thinking they know you with having an actual life became a bit more complicated.
"It's one of the things that I struggle with, because the three of us—Dan, Rupert and I—were kids when we got cast in this fairy-tale series, and what happened to us was kind of a fantasy story in itself," Watson told Jessica Chastain in a chat for Interview magazine in 2017 that apparently took place while Watson was in her bathtub. "Outside of the movies. So the story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I've been so passionate about having a private identity."
Watson would be first to say she's come a long way since bursting onto the scene as the most clever little wizard at Hogwarts, so in her honor we're shedding a little lumos on what Dan, Rupert and the rest of the tender-aged cast of the blockbuster series are up to now:
So, nine years after the final Harry Potter film came out, life has indeed gone on for the franchise's young actors. Some journeys have been more charmed than others, but all have fallen into their respective grooves.
Literally, at times.
"Steve Jobs has a great speech where he talks about how the wrong turns in his life truly set him on the path that he needed to be on," Emma Watson mused in her Interview sit-down. "Anyway, what do I do? I bake. I'm pretty competitive about my chocolate chip banana bread. I don't think anyone can believe how good it is. It's really on another level. And I hang out with my cat. I love to travel…I love to dance.
"I'm the girl who will get up and dance with zero alcohol in her system. You need give me no excuse. A great song comes on and I'm there; it's happening."