Last month the Harry Potter actress announced she was taking time out from her studies at Brown University so she could focus on her film career.

But last week it was alleged that she was bullied out of the US Ivy League college.

One report claimed that when the 21-year-old responded correctly to questions, her classmates would shout ”Three points for Gryffindor!” – a reference to a house at Hogwarts, the fictional school in the Harry Potter franchise.

Watson, who plays bookworm Hermione in the movies, said in a message on her website: ”I felt the need to let you all know the reason I took a semester off from Brown had nothing to do with bullying as the media have been suggesting recently.

”I have never been bullied in my life and certainly never at Brown. This ’10 points to Gryffindor’ incident never even happened.

”I feel the need to say this because accusing Brown students of something as serious as bullying and this causing me to leave seems beyond unfair.”

She insisted she had not even decided on her own plans for later in the year.

”Please don’t try and speculate about what I might do in September – no one can possibly know because I don’t even know yet! Like my other fellow Brown students I am trying to figure out my third year and whether or not I will spend it abroad (this is common).”

Staff and students at the university have backed up Watson’s claims.

Visiting professor Bianca Dahl said: ”There was an awareness of her, but in a protective way.

”I can’t fathom that faculty or students would allow bullying to happen.”

Graduate Allison Zimmer added: ”At the beginning there was a little bit of an aura around her. People would say, ‘Oh, I just had my first Emma Watson spotting’. But that faded after the first few weeks.

”It was almost uncool to mention it.”

Last week, Watson’s spokeswoman Vanessa Davies said the actress would transfer to another university in autumn because she had ”decided to pursue a different course which sadly Brown does not offer.”

She said the university was ”affiliated to Brown”, and added that she might return to Brown for her final year.

The actress joined the university in Providence, Rhode Island, in September 2009, initially to study literature.

She recently finished filming Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the final instalment in the JK Rowling stories, which has its world premiere in London in July.

She will also star in Perks Of Being A Wallflower, the Hollywood adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s novel.