PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Emma Watson, the British actress who plays Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series, denied on Friday reports that she was bullied out of Brown University.

“The reason I took a semester off from Brown had nothing to do with bullying,” Watson wrote on her website. “I have never been bullied in my life and certainly never at Brown.”

The actress recently announced she was taking time out of her studies to focus on her movie career.

Watson says she is not sure what her plans are for the fall semester, the beginning of her third year. Like many of her “fellow Brown students,” she is considering studying abroad, she wrote.

Brown has not commented on media reports this month citing an anonymous Brown “insider” who claimed Watson was bullied out of school.

A New York Daily News article posted online April 21 claimed that when Watson responded correctly to questions in class, her classmates would shout, “Three points for Gryffindor!” That’s a reference to the “Harry Potter” films, in which student’s dormitory houses are awarded points for questions they answer correctly. Watson’s character lives in Gryffindor.

“This ’10 points to Gryffindor’ incident never even happened,” wrote Watson, who has denied that rumor before. “Accusing Brown students of something as serious as bullying and this causing me to leave seems beyond unfair.”

Watson‘s comments come a week after Vanessa Davies, her spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that the actress will transfer to another university in the fall because she “has decided to pursue a different course which sadly Brown does not offer.”

Still, it’s “possible and likely she may return to Brown in her final year,” Davies told the AP.

Davies did not identify the university to which Watson will be transferring, but said it was “affiliated to Brown.” She did not elaborate on what that might mean.

Brown has declined to comment on Watson‘s plans.


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