Hand of Glory

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183921

Melissa wrote:  
> It might be a simple as Draco not having had the HoG until that 
night. After all  the other vanishing cabinet was stationed  in B&B
why not leave the HoG there as well until it was needed to lead  the
DE's into Hogwart's.

Carol responds:
And until the Hogwarts Vanishing Cabinet was fixed. I agree that it
would make perfect sense to leave the hand of Glory at Borgin and
Burkes (I suppose that Draco would have trusted to Borgin's fear of
retribution as opposed to trusting Borgin's honesty), but that's not
what the text says. Ron somehow knows that Draco has a Hand of Glory.
IOW, he's supposdedly actually seen it at Hogwarts (or been told by
Harry that Draco's father bought it, which he didn't). 

As for Pippin's suggestion that Draco showed it off it a boys'
bathroom and Ron saw it, there's no canon to support that speculation,
and as I've already pointed out, no one could see a demonstration of
an artifact that can only be seen by the holder. Draco isn't going to
magically put out the torches in a boys' bathroom to magically
demonstrate something that can't be seen, risking boys from other
Houses coming in and relighting the torches. *If* he could demonstrate
it, and *if* he could get it into Hogwarts unconfiscated, and *if he
was willing to risk his Slytherin cronies blabbing about it in Snape's
hearing, he would have done so in the common room, where the likes of
Ron Weasley would know nothing about it.

Carol, who thinks that the simplest explanation, the only one that
doesn't require searching for unacanonical off-page solutions, is that
JKR simply forgot that Harry didn't see Draco buying the Hand of Glory
in CoS