Hand of Glory

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183867

Catlady wrote:
> <snip> It had surely seemed to me in CoS that Draco was just looking
curiously at the Hand of Glory, not actually interested in acquiring
it. So it sprang into my mind that Draco only got an urge to own the
HoG as part of his emotional resentment response to being publicly
scolded by his father. So he bought the HoG by owl order with his
pocket money soon after arriving at Hogwarts for the CoS year, and
kept it with him thereafter. Ron and many other people saw him
demonstrating it in public which Harry did not see because Harry was
at Quidditch practise.
<snip>

Carol responds:
Certainly, Draco (like Harry) first learned about the Hand of Glory in
that scene in CoS, and I agree with the suggestion that Draco could
have acquired it by owl order (not in reaction to his father's
treatment of him but out of practical necessity, as part of his scheme
for bringing the DEs into Hogwarts once he fixed the Vanishing Cabinet).

However, I doubt very much that he demonstrated publicly how it works.
For one thing, he needed darkness (not available at a Quidditch
match). He wouldn't have had any Peruvian Darkness Powder with him
before DH, for one, and he wouldn't have wasted it, not to mention his
desire for secrecy. Also, to demonstrate it, he'd have had to allow
someone else to hold it (only the holder can see in the darkness)--not
easily demonstrated publicly, and would Draco be willing to let it
slip from his possession into the hands of someone he couldn't see? 

Moreover, a Hand of Glory is a Dark object. If he tried to show it to
his friends outside the Slytherin common room, Mrs. Norris would have
been onto it instantly and reported to Filch. He couldn't have brought
it into Hogwarts himself because the students in HBP were probed with
Filch's secrecy sensor (Filch confiscated a shrunken head from Crabbe
or Goyle) and the owls were being searched, just as they had been in
OoP (presumably because DD and Snape had some idea what Draco was up
to). I suppose that he could have sneaked it in in his trunk, assuming
that the trunks weren't scanned with the Secrecy Sensor (though surely
they would be), but even then, neither Ron nor Draco could have seen it.

Carol, wondering how the owls, which normally fly into the Great Hall
to deliver their messages and packages unimpeded, could have been
redirected and searched