What Draco's Hand of Glory represents
In Harry Potter, we are introduced to the Hand of Glory in Chamber of Secrets, when Draco visits Borgin & Burke's with his father. This is the exchange where we learn of Lucius's demanding expectations of his son, and the Hand is the plot device that triggers it:
“Can I have that?” interrupted Draco, pointing at the withered hand on its cushion.
“Ah, the Hand of Glory!” said Mr Borgin, abandoning Mr Malfoy’s list and scurrying over to Draco. “Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! Your son has fine taste, sir.”
“I hope my son will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin,” said Mr Malfoy coldly, and Mr Borgin said quickly, “No offence, sir, no offence meant—”
“Though if his grades don’t pick up,” said Mr Malfoy, more coldly still, “that may indeed be all he is fit for—”
“It’s not my fault,” retorted Draco. “The teachers all have favourites, that Hermione Granger—”
“I would have thought you’d be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam,” snapped Mr Malfoy.
In European folklore, a Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a hanged criminal. The Hand was said to possess several different powers, including giving light only to its holder, and in many stories, it was indeed used by thieves.
But what Draco does with the Hand, in Half-Blood Prince, is sneak the Death Eaters into Hogwarts:
“Anyway,” Ginny went on, “[Malfoy] must have been checking whether the coast was clear to let the Death Eaters out, because the moment he saw us he threw something into the air and it all went pitch-black— [...] Obviously Malfoy could see because of that hand thing and was guiding them[.]”
So, in CoS, the Hand of Glory represents everything Lucius has contempt for — the riffraff, the low-lives, the disreputable, the losers, the failures, all that which a Malfoy will not be tolerated to be.
(It never occurs to Lucius, of course, that Death Eaters might be much worse than thieves and plunderers, because his morality is not based on the reduction of suffering, but on social prestige and pureblood supremacy).
Yet, in HBP, Draco uses the Hand to serve a purpose drilled into him by his Malfoy upbringing, while Death Eater activities are brought down to the same level as thieving and plundering.
As a statement from the text's perspective, the association of its main antagonists (basically a gang of racists) with petty thieves (a socially vulnerable group) to highlight their shadiness is a questionable choice — indeed, the books have no sympathy for thievery and considerable disdain for it, if the portrayal of Mundungus Fletcher is any indication.
Nonetheless, from the perspective of Lucius and his worldview, it's an interesting slap in his face: Death Eaters are, in fact, disreputable evildoers just as much as petty thieves, and thus Lucius set up his son to become precisely the type of failure Lucius himself deemed so abominable.
To Draco, meanwhile, in CoS the Hand symbolises the withheld approval of his father. First, the object Draco finds cool (stan this goth king) is derided by Lucius; then, Lucius refuses to indulge Draco's desire for it; and finally, it becomes a segway into Lucius' outright telling Draco that he's not good enough — in public, no less.
However, by HBP Draco has gone against his father's wishes and purchased the Hand at some point anyway. It's significant that Draco employs it in his Death Eater mission because, as I see it, Draco's becoming a Death Eather is both an attempt to finally prove himself to his father and to prove himself better than his father.
If Lucius's blunder at the DoM triggered the Malfoys' fall from grace, Draco's success will be what earns them even more honour than they had before. If Lucius underestimated the Hand of Glory, and by extension Draco himself, Draco's putting the Hand to important use for their "noble" cause will show how much smarter he is than his father.
That's why Draco is so preoccupied with Snape stealing his — wouldn't you know it — glory:
“I know what you’re up to! You want to steal my glory!”
There was another pause, then Snape said coldly, “You are speaking like a child. I quite understand that your father’s capture and imprisonment has upset you, but—”
[…] Malfoy was striding away down the corridor, past the open door of Slughorn’s office, around the distant corner, and out of sight.
It's not that Draco is renouncing his father, though — in public Draco remains loyal to him, directing his anger exclusively at the Light side for daring to cross his family, and he is genuinely concerned for Lucius's well-being in Azkaban, as suggested by Draco's poorly disguised vulnerability in OotP:
“The dementors have left Azkaban,” said Malfoy quietly. “Dad and the others’ll be out in no time. . .”
And even Draco's audacious intent in HBP is nothing more than an angrily, bitterly desperate bid for Lucius's validation. Draco's actions are not truly emancipatory because his father is still the point of reference that determines his worth. And that's why Draco gets incensed when Snape calls him a child and brings up his father in order to patronise him: the whole Death Eater thing is meant to deny that he is a child emotionally subordinated to his father, but it is Draco who is in denial that that still is very much the case.
He even outwardly shifts the focus of his daddy issues to Voldemort:
“[Snape]’s been offering me plenty of help — wanting all the glory for himself— […] But I haven’t told him what I’ve been doing in the Room of Requirement, he’s going to wake up tomorrow and it’ll all be over and he won’t be the Dark Lord’s favourite anymore, he’ll be nothing compared to me, nothing!”
“Very gratifying,” said Dumbledore mildly. “We all like appreciation for our own hard work, of course. […]"
But I'd say Draco's ultimate goal is to make his glory so undeniable that Lucius will be forced to recognise it — if the Dark Lord deems him worthy, how can Lucius disagree? If he's taken the place of "the Dark Lord's favourite", which, before Snape, was occupied by Lucius — although Draco won't verbally draw attention to that — how can Lucius not be satisfied?
Therefore, the presence of the Hand of Glory in HBP reflects the paradoxical nature of Draco's relationship with his father: it incarnates a crude attempt at defiance, but also links Draco's Death Eater present to the theme of the past CoS scene — craving his father's approval.
And in the end, what it sheds light upon is that all this impotent endeavour can accomplish is to lower Draco to the contemptible status of thieves, plunderers, and Death Eaters.
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