  We revisit the problem of local moment formation in graphene due to
chemisorption of individual atomic hydrogen or other analogous sp$^3$ covalent
functionalizations. We describe graphene with the single orbital Hubbard model,
so that the H chemisorption is equivalent to a vacancy in the honeycomb
lattice. In order to circumvent artefacts related to periodic unit cells, we
use either huge simulation cells of up to $8\times10^5$ sites, or an embedding
scheme that allows the modelling of a single vacancy in an otherwise pristine
infinite honeycomb lattice. We find three results that stress the anomalous
nature of the magnetic moment ($m$) in this system. First, in the
non-interacting ($U=0$), zero temperature ($T=0$) case, the $m(B)$ is a
continuous smooth curve with divergent susceptibility, different from the
step-wise constant function found for a single unpaired spins in a gapped
system. Second, for $U=0$ and $T>0$, the linear susceptibility follows a power
law $\propto{T}^{-\alpha}$ with an exponent of $\alpha=0.77$ different from
conventional Curie's law. For $U>0$, in the mean field approximation, the
integrated moment is smaller than $m=1\mu_B$, in contrast with results using
periodic unit cells. These three results highlight that the magnetic response
of the local moment induced by sp$^3$ functionalizations in graphene is
different both from that of local moments in gaped systems, for which the
magnetic moment is quantized and follows a Curie law, and from Pauli
paramagnetism in conductors, for which a linear susceptibility can be defined
at $T=0$.
