Hand of Glory

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 183928

Carol: 
> 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. 

Pippin:
I don't know why this idea is so hard to get across, but I'm not
saying that Draco actually demonstrated the HoG for Ron. I've known
kids to bring a weapon, a knife or even a gun,  to school with zero
intention of using it, just to show it off. It's cool in itself, you see?
 
> 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

Pippin:
Having him buy it on page wouldn't dispose of your objections about
getting it into the school or Ron knowing what it does or what it
looks like. It *would* give away a plot point and spoil JKR's joke of
hinting that something from the Borgin and Burkes scene would figure
in the story later, the joke being that   almost *everything* does --
playing cards, human bones, evil masks, glass eye, Hand of Glory, opal
necklace, poison, the shrunken head from the store across the street,
and of course the vanishing cabinet. 


It seems to me that Ron's remark about fixing the hand of glory is
there precisely because JKR thought that finding out about it for the
 first time when Ginny reports how Draco used it would be jarring. But
she couldn't let Harry know for sure that Draco had it at Hogwarts
during HBP either. He'd have reported it, for one thing. So she had
Ron mention it *before* they return to Hogwarts.

I think it's rather clever plotting, actually.

Pippin