Since there was enough time for a young teenager to turn into a not-so-young teenager, I found that dear Malfoy no longer looked, in Prisoner of Azkaban, like Darkside. No.
Instead, he looked far too much like my ex-friend-with-benefits, my high school best friend That Idiot Shawn.
It was the chin and the hair that did it. Tom Felton's eyes are more intense blue than Shawn's grey, but they have the same wide chin that dominates the face. Tom doesn't have as wide a mouth, nor as unique a nose, but he sports the same haircut in that movie that Shawn did throughout high school and a year or so after. Not only that, but their hair is the same color.
Let me explain. Shawn had, from the time I met him, dark brown hair just a shade lighter than my own. He wore it in that center-parted cheekbone-length cut by the end of high school. The year following that, Shawn had his mop bleached to that self-same blazing platinum blond. (His mother warned me before I saw the new 'do, so I didn't scream or faint.)
The resemblance didn't come out in the stills I saw from the trailers, but in the actual movie, it was startling and could have been stomach-churning. I am happy in that at least Malfoy and Shawn are sufficiently dissimilar in character so that the physical, and one glorious moment in a scene with Hermione, were the only things in common.
I had the most delightful flashback when Hermione punched Malfoy. You see, once upon a nightmare, I'd been going to go see a movie with Shawn and BJ. BJ tapped out sick, and Shawn stood me up, because it would have been like a date. Upon seeing him the next day at school, I got this explanation.
I was furious. I swung, and connected. He had been standing up against the front window/wall of the library in the school, so when he started to topple over backwards, he slid down and sat there woozily, just so. Instead of making like Malfoy, though, he just sat there for some time, stunned.
Concerned, I bent down over him. "How many fingers am I holding up?" I inquired, proffering a significant digit.
Satisfied that he was not concussed, I stalked off.
Tom Felton's resemblance to Shawn is both amusing and very, very scary.