Emma Watson leaves Brown for a spell

Though her own representative said in April that actress Emma Watson was leaving Brown University, the "Harry Potter" star now says this is not so.

"I haven't left Brown. I'm still enrolled at Brown," she told reporters at a Manhattan news conference last week for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2." "But I'm doing my third year abroad," she explained. "I'm going to Oxford in the fall to study English [literature] for a year."

Last month, Watson, 21, who plays teen sorceress Hermione Granger, denied rumors that she was bullied out of Brown. She was actually leaving the Rhode Island college, her spokeswoman Vanessa Davies said, to pursue courses not being offered there.

Without explaining the seeming contradiction, Watson told the press last Sunday: "I'll go back to the States to do my last year. I took a semester off, but my credits actually count as an advance [placement], so I'm no further behind. I'm still technically going into my third year."

As for what's upcoming for her professionally, "Reading, reading, reading and trying to find the next thing that really speaks to me and that I really care about," she said. "Finding great directors, hopefully, who will keep teaching me so I can keep learning. I'm excited about the idea of being an actress now in a way that I wasn't so sure of when I was younger."