Author's Note: A missing moment from Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix. I felt challenged to tie together several strands of information - particularly why Dung was banned from the Hog's Head and that Albus once got Dung out of a tight spot.

Rating: For language; heed it.

Context

Excerpt from Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 17, Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four by J.K. Rowling:

"You want to choose your meeting places more carefully," said Sirius, grinning still more broadly. "The Hog's Head, I ask you..."

"Who overheard us?" Harry demanded.
"Mundungus, of course," said Sirius, and when they all looked puzzled he laughed. "He was the witch under the veil."
"That was Mundungus?" Harry asked, stunned. "What was he doing in the Hog's Head?"
"What do you think he was doing?" said Sirius impatiently. "Keeping an eye on you, of course."

"Why was Dung hiding from us?" asked Ron, sounding disappointed. "We'd've liked to've seen him."
"He was banned from the Hog's Head twenty years ago," said Sirius, "and that barman's got a long memory..."

Missing Moment: What Happened in the Hog's Head

-or-

Aberforth Struggles with Anger Management

Without the spare invisibility cloak, Mundungus was left to use a Disillusionment Charm – but if there was one thing he had perfected during his life, it was a Disillusionment Charm. Such was an essential bit of knowledge in his line of work.

Still, it was no fun traipsing after a bunch of thick-headed teenagers on his day off when he'd rather be making a galleon or two...hundred. He rather hoped they wouldn't be long in Hogsmeade, so he could give his report to Dumbledore and get on with his day. His mind started to drift to the current black-market price on class D non-tradeables when he happened to overhear the Granger girl just as they reached the outskirts of town.

"Oh – no, no, it's always packed and really noisy. I've told the others to meet us in the Hog's Head, that other pub, you know the one, it's not on the main road. I think it's a bit...you know...dodgy...but students don't normally go in there, so I don't think we'll be overheard."*

He nearly choked.

What the hell...? They were going to the Hog's Head? Why the devil weren't they going to the Three Broomsticks like normal kids? He felt the air suck from his lungs in fear.

What in the name of Merlin's sagging testicles were they thinking, going to the motherfucking Hog's Head?!

He would have to have to come up with a new plan, and fast. There were plenty of people about at that moment, which meant that Potter probably wouldn't be attacked in the next five minutes. Dung hesitated for a split second before hurrying down a side street, out of sight and behind a building. Amongst the dust bins, he glared at his grubby robes. He would have to transfigure them into a witch's attire. And a veil to hide his face, goddamn it, because otherwise that sadistic asshole Aberforth would have his head on the platter above the pub instead of that revolting boar's!

oOo

What all the sons of bitches didn't know was that disguises were absolutely useless. It entertained Aberforth to no end, in a dark sort of way. None of them knew there was an Undetectable-Detectable Charm set up at the door – a charm he had created himself, as a matter of fact. It was linked to the till, so whenever someone crossed the threshold in disguise, the charm flashed small writing on the till that no one else could see, which told Aberforth who had actually just entered. Disguises were useless. Nothing got past the charm. Albus may have been brilliant, but Aberforth excelled at odd charms and hexes, and this one was particularly useful.

Depending on his mood, he would let the disguised person stay; other times, he would call them out on the disguise and kick their arse to the street, amidst snickers from the rest of the crowd. Hell, sometimes he banned people for kicks, just to see how they would sneak into his pub the next time.

Of course, for kicks was not how Dung got banned – Dung got banned for selling illegal chimera eggs under the table. If it had just been the eggs, Aberforth probably wouldn't have given much of a damn, but when one of the miserable monsters fucking hatched and all bloody hell broke loose, he lost his practically non-existent temper. He was still finding evidence of that less-than-forgetful night twenty years after the fact, like the gouge marks from talons scarred into the floor on the far-right side of the pub. It had been all he could do to get a Patronus off to Albus for help and hold the evil thing off until his brother arrived.

Albus had fortunately shown up moments before the Ministry did, handled the chimera with Aberforth's help, and somehow smoothed everything over – he got Aberforth off the hook at any rate, and Dung was still paying Albus back for getting him out of Azkaban. Aberforth didn't ask how his brother pulled it off. That wasn't his business. Albus owned him big time regardless, and one chimera-hatchling-mess-smoothed-over wasn't going to forgive past wrongs that could never be fully forgiven.

As for Dung, he had been banned with no exceptions, not even disguises.

The problem was, when Dung entered dressed as a witch with a veil, Aberforth was serving Widdershins, who was also banned (and in disguise), and he didn't glance at the register again until after he'd served Dung, having mistaken Dung for a witch. Which royally pissed him off. Normally he always looked at the charm before serving someone, and the fact that he forgot riled him up. Now he had two people sitting at his bar in disguises, both of whom had been banned for damned good reasons, and he was rightly hacked off. He was just about toss both scumbag arseholes out of the door when it opened again, and Potter walked in.

Bloody hell.

The truth hit him like a hippogriff on a rampage. So that's what was going on, was it? Dung was supposed to be protecting Potter – it didn't take a genius to figure that much out, as Aberforth was privy to the Order of the Phoenix's operations. Which meant that, unless Aberforth wanted to protect Potter himself for a bit, he would have to let Dung stay in his stupid disguise and remain at the bar, pretending to be a hag.

Several questions immediately went through his head. Like, why in the name of Merlin's pants had Albus decided to put Dung in charge of shadowing Potter in the first place? Then, of course, there was the second obvious question – why was Potter in the Hog's Head at all? Students rarely visited Aberforth's seedy establishment, which was how Aberforth preferred it. It wasn't illegal for students to visit his pub, but it was damned annoying. Usually the dirt and overall sketchiness kept them at bay.

To make matters worse, no sooner had he grudgingly served Potter and his two tag-along friends, than the door started opening repeatedly, and more kids kept coming in. When a matching pair of red-headed, freckled, smirking dickheads leaned up against the bar to announce the number of butterbeers they wanted, his temper spiked dangerously. Gideon and Fabian should be proud even in death, he thought furiously, as he smothered his irritation and hauled dusty bottles from beneath the bar. Their bratty twin nephews had the same sort of cheeky mouths and maniacal looks in their eyes that their uncles had had years ago. Aberforth hadn't liked Gideon or Fabian, either.

With all the kids in his pub, plus two banned people, it was unlikely that things would run smoothly for too long. Which meant that he would very likely have to send a Patronus to Albus before the day was over. And to be perfectly honest, that was the worst part about the whole damn thing – not Widdershins, Dung, Potter, or all of the effing kids flooding his usually quiet pub – but the fact that he would have to speak to fucking Albus, which was something he resolutely tried to avoid as much as possible.

It went downhill from there, just as Aberforth had known it would. Some twenty-odd kids in his bar couldn't possibly bode well – and didn't. Before he knew it, they were asking Potter to recount what had happened the previous June during the Tri-Wizard Tournament with Cedric Diggory and You-Know-Who.

He couldn't help but listen, along with everyone else in the pub. Albus hadn't given him a decent account of it. No doubt Albus wasn't given anyone a decent account of it – secrets and lies, just like their mother. Bits of half-truths and crumbs of information, but never everything, because everything might mess up Albus's big grand plan, whatever the hell that was these days.

He couldn't believe that the kids who came to the pub actually thought they could get away with having this conversation without anyone overhearing. Were they truly idiots? They would have done better to go to Rosmerta's cheery little bar instead! The greater wizarding world would know about this conversation in a matter of hours, damn it! He surely wasn't that much of a dolt when he was fifteen years old.

But, in a way, it was also sadistically entertaining. Potter telling his friends about Voldemort (and, by extension, everyone else in the pub and therefore, the rest of the wizarding world), only meant one more thing that Albus would have to contend with. And Albus rather deserved the responsibility of keeping an emotionally damaged, sullen teenager in check. Aberforth almost smiled at the very idea while he was wiping out glasses, but he checked himself just in time. He realized he'd stopped wiping the glass he was holding and quickly resumed his mindless task, listening to the conversation at the same time.

Now they were all signing a pledge to join a Defense Against the Dark Arts group while agreeing to keep it quiet from Delores Umbridge. Aberforth just did manage not to snort. That woman had spies everywhere and she was a pain in everyone's ass. She would probably hear about this little plan before Potter even made it back to the castle. But that too was Albus's problem, and all the better.

Only when the last kid filed out of his pub, followed quickly by Mundungus and shortly after by Widdershins, did Aberforth exhale in relief. Fortunately, the few others left shortly after as well, no doubt to go tell their friends and relatives about the fantastic story they'd just heard. Aberforth stepped onto the stoop and scowled, watching the last retreating back until it disappeared around the corner into the main street. Only then did he cast his Patronus to Albus. As soon as it vanished, he stormed back inside and slammed the door rather harder than necessarily. He'd had enough for one day, he thought with disgust, as he locked the door with several spells. And for good measure, he cast a darkness spell on the windows, just to keep people from knocking.

oOo

If there was anything Albus wasn't expecting and anything he didn't particularly wish to see, it was that infernal, shaggy, scruffy, ill-tempered, growling goat Patronus. It had to be something rather important for the thing to even appear in his office, because Aberforth didn't contact him unless chaos and brimstone was raining down.

The goat glared at him in a typical, bullheaded fashion that he acutely associated with his younger brother, waiting for confirmation that Albus was alone before it delivered its message. Albus waved his wand and cast a nonverbal spell, giving the goat permission to speak.

Aberforth's snarlish voice snapped, "You've got a load of dung to contend with. Come at midnight, and I don't give a rat's arse if it's convenient or not."

The goat vanished.

Albus's ire rose immediately. He allowed Aberforth far more license than most people to make demands of his time, primarily because it wasn't very often that his brother insisted he come to the Hog's Head in the first place. The tip about Dung was strange, though. He hadn't seen Dung all day, though Dung had been on duty to shadow Harry. But Albus hadn't received a Patronus from Dung, yet. What on earth did his brother mean? It was damned annoying, trying to sort out riddles.

Only five minutes later, however, Dung's hound dog materialized on the floor in front of the desk, looking baleful and sullen. "Potter ended up in the Hog's Head, with a bunch of other kids! He told them bloody well everything! Everything that happened in the graveyard that night and all about You-Know-Who! And then they all signed some sort of pledge to start a Defense Against the Dark Arts group and keep it secret! I couldn't do anything because you KNOW Aberforth hates me, so I had to go in disguise and it's just a big effin' mess! I mean, no one attacked the boy, so I suppose that's a good thing. He's back in the castle, now. I did me best, you know. They're bleedin' teenagers, no one can stop 'em from doing stuff like that! You can't blame me for this!"

The hound dog vanished. Albus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Well, that explained rather a lot. Aberforth was probably in a towering temper, and he couldn't really blame his brother. The whole thing would make for a damned unpleasant evening.

But he didn't have time dissect the information further – the gargoyle at the base of the stairs was shifting and Albus frowned as his head turned sharply to the door. That would likely be Umbridge... probably to inquire about societies and clubs. He would be astounded if she hadn't heard about Harry's little plan yet. No doubt she would be banning all societies and clubs next, probably by the next morning – as soon as she could get Fudge to sign off on the paperwork.

oOo

Albus apparated directly into the pub, a courtesy only he was allowed. It was empty. Undoubtably, his brother was upstairs, so he set off up the rickety staircase and emerged in the dismal upper chamber.

Arianna's portrait smiled benignly at him, like a punch to the gut (as always), and Albus resolutely turned away from her only to come face-to-face with Aberforth. He wasn't sure which was worse.

Aberforth's lip was drawn back in a snarl. "Let me guess," he started acidly. "Umbridge has banned all group gatherings, I expect?"

Albus sighed. "As soon as Fudge signs the paperwork."

Aberforth waved his wand and a plate of cheese, bread, ham, and ale landed on the table. He didn't invite Albus to sit, but they both did – a mutual, silent agreement. Tense as always.

Aberforth muttered, "She has spies everywhere. Stupid kids – they should've known better than to come into my place. I didn't want 'em here anyways."

"I've already notified the Order," Albus answered wearily.

"And how are you going to get him out of this one?" Aberforth's blue eyes pierced across the table like daggers. "You know damned well he's going to hold those meetings even if Umbridge bans clubs and groups. He's going to get expelled, and then what're you going to do?"

"That's my responsibility." Albus didn't elaborate. It wasn't Aberforth's business, and he didn't like to put all eggs in too many baskets, as the saying went.

Aberforth leaned back in his chair, his glasses flashing in the firelight. "I don't like the idea of innocent kids getting hurt." His voice was rough and soft at the same time; they each knew perfectly well what he was hinting. He didn't meet his brother's eyes, but his fingers clenched into his arms as if restraining himself.

"Nor do I," Albus replied sharply. Aberforth was likely the only person in the world who could insinuate such a thing and not receive a stunning spell to the chest for it, but only just.

"Just see that he doesn't." Aberforth's eyes flickered to the portrait over the fireplace.

Arianna merely smiled sadly at both of them.

~FIN

* Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 16, In the Hog's Head.