After eight movies-worth of magic spells, fiendish plots, diabolic nastiness and big ol’ butterbeer binges, Harry Potter is finally drawing to a close. It’s a moment to bring a touch of sadness to even the stoniest heart. The film’s three stars, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe, mere whippersnappers when they began on The Philosopher’s Stone, are all growed up now and ready to move on to new challenges. Before they did just that, Empire was lucky enough to sit down with the three of them and ask them some questions tricky enough for Peter Pettigrew himself.

Name a spell and explain what it does.
Daniel Radcliffe: ‘Alohomora’ unlocks doors. That’s a vintage spell from the first film. After the fourth film, we barely used any spells except for ‘Expelliarmus’ and ‘Stupefy’. That’s pretty much it! For a good few films those are the only ones that the kids seemed to know. They always beat everyone, which was one of those mysteries for me.

Emma Watson: ‘Wingardium leviosa’ makes objects float or levitate.

Rupert Grint: Yeah, there’s ‘wingardium leviosa’. That’s always been a favourite. It levitates.

Have you ever had tea with JK Rowling?
Radcliffe: Umm, yes! I’m sure I have. I don’t know if it was tea but I certainly had dinner with her. I’m sure I’ve had Diet Coke with her in this room. So yes, I’ve had what qualifies as tea with JK.

Watson: I haven’t had tea with JK. I’ve had orange juice with JK. We had a nice chat in my dressing room and we went through a period where we were emailing, which was nice.…

Emma Watson is walking through a field of buttercups and daisies, dappled in sunlight and dressed in white, on a glorious day in early English summer. “You’re a dandelion head!” says one of the team that surround her for the fashion shoot, as if in encouragement. “Hello, flower!” says photographer Alexi Lubomirski from the top of his stepladder. Watson smiles beatifically, big eyes luminous beneath her gamine auburn crop, but as any conversation with her swiftly reveals, her head isn’t filled with dandelion fluff at all. In the quick breaks from the shoot – wherein she has transformed herself for the camera from the picture of innocence to a raven-haired vamp-siren – she talks about fair-trade fashion, feminism, Kazuo Ishiguro and Catherine of Aragon. For, at 21, Watson – once upon a time the most instantly recognisable little girl in the world – is a force to be reckoned with, and if not quite all grown up, then well on her way to adult maturity.

Still, it’s not hard to feel maternal towards her, at least for anyone like me with children the same age who has watched her grow up on camera as Hermione Granger in the ‘Harry Potter’ films. Hermione was always my favourite – the cleverest girl in Hogwarts, brave and loyal, yes also, in the words of author J.K. Rowling (who has identified her younger self with her heroine), hiding “a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure”. Cast at the age of nine, Watson has starred in the series for the past decade, with the final instalment released this July; her life is so inextricable linked with the making of the movies that it’s hard to separate where Hermione ends and Emma begins.…

The young actress on saying goodbye to Harry Potter, her future, how her new haircut has made her feel bolder, those Burberry ads and how she is addicted to learning.

How sad was it to say goodbye to Hermione?
It felt sad. She feels like an old friend of mine. So it does feel sad definitely.

Rupert was saying that he didn’t think that you will ever lose touch with each other. Is that something that you agree with?
Oh, I really hope that he never finds me again. No, of course. We grew up together. He’s practically like my brother. There’s no way that we’re losing touch.

Now that everything is completely finished, how do you feel? Liberated, completely sad?
Both. It’s very freeing on the one hand and very sad on the other. It’s both, bittersweet.

You’ve gone to university, obviously, do you imagine taking up acting in the future or are you just seeing what happens?
I just did a movie, finished something last week, “My Week With Marilyn”, which is exciting. No, I think I’ll just keep doing things. But my education is my number one priority at the moment and everything else comes around that really.

How are you enjoying that?
It’s wonderful. I love it. Really do.

How difficult is it to look at a so called normal life cause everybody knows who you are…
The grass is always greener. So for me never having really known a normal life, the idea of sitting around in my dorm having a glass of wine and some pizza is really exciting to me.…

It’s the pixie-cut hair and flawless skin that give her away. Emma Watson is dressed unobtrusively in a cotton flower-print French Connection dress and beige sandals, but she is unmistakable. Fans have accosted her five times in the past half hour alone. Today is the actress’s twenty-first birthday, and she is determined to spend it as she pleases—which means a leisurely mid-morning latte followed by a stroll through the Joan Miró exhibition at London’s Tate Modern.

Emma ignores the stares and continues to chat animatedly about Miró’s willingness to take risks with his art. An avid painter herself—“I love it and have a need to do it”—she can talk eloquently about every picture on the wall. Her favorite is The Farm, a painting once owned by Ernest Hemingway that brought the artist his first taste of success outside Spain. What she admires, Emma tells me, is that Miró was both a draftsman and a painter, unafraid to combine these talents to create something that was simultaneously surreal and hyperreal.

Her words could just as well apply to what is happening around us. The increasingly febrile atmosphere is, frankly, terrifying as word filters through that Hermione Granger, Emma’s alter ego (who will make her final appearance in this month’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2), is in the building. A raucous band of teenagers turns around and heads straight toward her. “It’s time to go,” she says, and we head swiftly for the nearest exit. Outside, a photographer in a tree starts snapping away until she is inside the car and driving away.…