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The first time she took his hand and started tracing the lines, Harry almost didn't notice. He was in the hospital bed after the fight with Voldemort. His mind was screaming with horrendous images, circling questions and confusing emotions. It felt sort of nice, though, whatever it was that she was doing.
“I'm so happy you woke up! Ron and I have been so worried”, Hermione was saying, and Harry tore his gaze from a chocolate-frog chasing Ron to Hermione, who was sitting beside his bed, his brown hand in her darker, bronze-colored ones. Her brown eyes were glittering with joy. He remembered her words on the giant chessboard, “There are more important things...” There were. They were important. Their friendship, the love of his parents for him, the evil they had been defying. Suddenly he was very grateful to still be alive. Gently, he tweaked Hermione's hand.
He couldn't remember the second time she did it, or the third. He didn't think she even realized she was doing it. A few times he almost asked her why, but he never did. She looked so peaceful when she was tracing his hand lines, and he didn't want her to stop. He was just curious.
One time though in their second year she stopped her movements, quite abrupt, and looked at him, then away to his hand again. “I'm sorry”, she said, to his hand, “this is a weird thing to do.” He wanted to say so many things. That it felt good to share this special thing with her. That it was not weird, and that it would always be ok. In the end he simply said “Go on.” And she did.
They got some odd looks thrown their way sometimes in the common room. Harry didn't mind it. People always found some reason to stare at him. He hated the attention, but had gotten used to ignoring it. Hermione reached out to people with her knowledge and her passion, but got rejected over and over again. Ron craved the attention he wasn't getting. In a strange way, the three of them fit together so well; they had their quibbles and dealings with jealously and rows, of course, but still always turned back to each other. When he was around them he felt like Harry, ‘just Harry’, not some kind of Boy Who Lived.
Hermione didn't stop grabbing his hand and tracing the lines and scars even after it all was over; their quest, the war, his one purpose in life (though Ron and Hermione would disagree with that last one). She would also rub the wool of Ron's sweater sometimes, or twirl a dense curl around her finger, but she only did the hand thing with him. The three of them had rented a flat in Oxford, started university, Auror's training, a teacher traineeship.
Sometimes, Harry wondered whether they were anything else than three lost kids pretending to be adults.
She had explained to him that was she did was called stimming, and that it was common among autistic people like her. He was happy for her that she understood herself better know. And tried not to giggle as her fingertips tickled him when they were curled upon the couch together one evening.
Ron sang in the shower; outside, the same stars twinkled above a ruined world in repair.