WATSON

Sometime on Saturday, maybe the wind will suddenly whip up. Maybe the sky will part. And, maybe fantastical things will happen up on College Hill in Providence.

Brown University will welcome its freshman class. And it just might welcome a wizard, or at least a wannabe: Emma Watson, the 19-year-old British actress who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies.

Stranger things have happened. Watson’s arrival at Brown has been widely reported. And the report is from a reliable, albeit reluctant source — Watson, who shares a basic wish.

“I want to be normal,” she said. “I really want anonymity. I want to do it properly, like everyone else. As long as I don’t walk in and see, like, Harry Potter posters everywhere, I’ll be fine.”

That’s what Watson said this summer in an interview with the Guardian newspaper in England. Watson was confirming the rumor that she’d be attending Brown. More specifically, she was admitting that what her co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, told the newspaper earlier was true. Radcliffe talked about how smart he thought Watson was. And to prove his point, he disclosed that in September she would be attending Brown, essentially publicly outing her previously private intention.

Yes, Watson said, it’s true, adding that she’s interested in studying English literature and art.

Brown welcomes the Class of 2013 for freshman orientation on Saturday. But officially, there’s no confirmation from the university that Watson will be among them.

“The Class of 2013 has not matriculated yet,” said a university spokesman. “The university does not release the names of students who have applied or who have been admitted. It’s not just for one person. We just don’t do that.”

In an interview this summer with the online Paste magazine, Watson repeated her intention to go to Brown, and to indulge in her love of literature.

“It sounds so geeky, but I really do like studying and reading, and if I’m not working on Harry Potter, then my greatest relaxation is to sit with a book. That’s how I escape stress — in literature. I always have several books on the go at any one moment.”

However, participating in more Harry Potter films is still a possibility for Watson while at Brown, she said.

“Acting and studying are in no way mutually exclusive, are they? Going there will mean a bit of ‘normality’ for a while. It doesn’t mean that I will never act again.”

Watson puts normality in quotes for a good reason. Her notion of normal isn’t the same as that of other 19-year-olds. For 10 years, she has been an international celebrity, involved in all six of the Harry Potter movies, portraying a Muggles-born student who goes off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The movies, based on the books by J.K. Rowling, have been huge, which makes Watson, as one of the movies’ central characters, known all over the world.

But still, when Watson arrives in Providence, assuming that she’s enrolling, she’s hoping for a lot of magic.

“I hope that it will be only a short time before I am known as ‘Emma Watson, the student from the U.K.’ rather than ‘Emma Watson who starred in those Harry Potter films.’ ”