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The first time she flapped her hands, she was just a baby, learning how to exist. She had just learnt to crawl that day, and had also discovered the joy that came with learning new things.
The last time she flapped her hands, she was 10, learning about the wonders of chemistry from a book far above her grade level in the library. She remembered that moment even now, the happiness of finally understanding how atoms worked, and the sneer on the kids faces as they pointed and laughed and poorly imitated her.
That was the very last time she flapped her hands. It wasn't the first time someone had pointed it out. She knew she wasn't like everyone else, but she didn't understand why it mattered. It mattered to some people. She promised to never flap her hands again.
But flapping your hands is not the kind of thing that you can stop altogether. Stims don't just go away. For her, it was how she interacted with the world. You could still see the remnants of the action in the way she wiggled her fingers and tapped on books and the way she rocked slowly back and forth when nobody was looking.
But now, the war was over. Her parents were back in Britain, their memories restored. She had an amazing boyfriend and lots of cool friends. The world was grieving for the dead, and she was too, but at the same time she was happy, relieved, overwhelmed, and she wanted to do nothing more than flap her hands.
So she did. In a locked room with an anti-unlocking charm and blacked out windows, she sat on her bed and let her fingers wiggle as they saw fit. It was a slow process, as if she was relearning a skill from her childhood. It started off with a wiggle, then a shake, a twist, a flap. At first it was forced, but soon the movements came naturally.
She sat in her locked room for hours, rediscovering. She flapped, and she jumped, and she repeated words over and over again in her mouth, and flapped some more. She flapped as she sat on her bed, rocking back and forth, letting joy take over her body. There was a certain grace in her movements. She wasn't smiling at all, but you could tell she was happy.
That night, she made herself another promise, the exact opposite of the one her 10 year old self made. It didn't matter what everyone else thought. She had friends now. She had a boyfriend now. She was Hermione Granger of all people, and she was going to flap her hands whenever the hell she felt like it.