Hermione cut her hair off shortly after the war. She held her braids up high and cut them off at the root.
Promptly after, she punched the mirror and broke her hand. She sobbed while sliding down the wall of the orange-lit bathroom, her hair around her. She screamed when the tears blurred her eyes and made the fallen hair look like snakes. She hid underneath her blanket when Harry and Ron tried to ask her what had happened. She didn't leave the room for two days.
This wasn't the first time she did this. She did it the first time in 5th year when Umbridge didn't let her in the classroom and then gave her detention for "skipping."
"My hair shall always be straight and professional."
That was when she learned to disassociate.
She ran to her dorm and cut it all in a fit of rage and anger. Her anger almost made the dorm explode if it wasn't for Ginny snapping her out of it. The younger girl would never get it. They both knew that. But they knew that they could trust each other, so Hermione let her and Angelina even it out and give her scarves to cover up the results of her sadness and anger.
You see, they could never know her anger. No one could ever know. That would give them power and strength over her. That would let them win, and they couldn't win. They couldn't see that they were killing her and breaking her down to her bare spirit.
So she hid it. She hid it under wigs and pretty scarfs with patterns of her ancestors and house colors. She was there and had made it that far for a reason, and she wasn't going to give up now.
---
During the war, she kept it and tried to stay away from scissors, even though she failed and always ended up cutting an inch off.
'everyone has their destructive habits.' she mused as she watched Ron drown in a bottle of whiskey that he grabbed, and Harry's eyes glazed over as he sunk into his head not to leave for days.
She still notices that they have those habits and that they're getting over them slowly but surely. Ron slowly got himself off of drinking every time he got stressed, Harry slips away sometimes, but he only stays for a while, and for Hermione. Well, she can cut the ends of her braids to boil them and get them ready for curling. She can cut the lace of her friends' wigs and wears scarves to bring more attention to her growing 'fro.
But now she sits in the living room with her daughter between her legs with children shows playing on the telly and her family laughing over Sunday dinner. She sits and smiles, putting braids into her daughter's hair, just like her mom did for her.