Dumbledore was sitting in his office, stroking his phoenix Fawkes. It has been a stressful couple of weeks trying to get everything ready for the upcoming school year. For Harry's first year.

That was why there was so much preparation in the first place.

In regular circumstances, it would be the same as any other year. He wanted Harry to have a normal time at Hogwarts, after all. It was such a pity that he may have to die to defeat Voldemort, and that is all the more reason to let him live and be a normal teen for the few years he had left. Of course, according to what he heard from Hagrid when he went to give little Harry his letter, this would probably the first time he would get to act like a human kid rather than a scapegoat kid.

Chuckling at his own pun, he unwrapped another lemon drop and reflected on how hundreds, if not thousands of letters, as well a half giant escort being required to retrieve Harry from the Durselys clutches, were not, in fact, even half of the preparation required for the upcoming year. No, the real reason that he had so much to do was because when Professor Quirrell came back from his sabbatical with the gaunt ring on his finger, and a dark presence about him, that he knew, without a doubt, was from Voldemort.

Sadly, everyone in the staff and school board was in denial and refused to believe him, preventing him from being able to fire Quirrell without both legal and reputational consequences. Instead, he focused on doing all he could to prevent harm from coming to the students. To achieve this, he decided to refuse Quirrell's request to become the new DADA professor and make him keep teaching muggle studies. Only halfbloods and some more accepting purebloods took muggle studies, so not only was Voldemort's interaction with his most ideal victims (muggleborns) limited, but also his interactions with the majority of the student body. Plus, the idea of a pureblood supremacist dark lord teaching muggle studies was downright hilarious.

The second part of his plan was actually more to protect Harry. With the timing, there was no way that Voldemort was planning on doing anything other than targeting Harry, so Dumbledore was going to distract him. Hopefully, Voldemort would find the possibility of resurrecting himself and securing immortality more desirable than killing. That is to say, Dumbledore requested his friend Nicolas Flamel to let him borrow his back-up stone and built a series of protections with the aid of the professors.

Then, a ringing from his fireplace brought him out of his musings. With a sigh, he stood up, stretched the aches out of his bones, and walked over to the floo. Peering into it to find that the caller was none other than Minister Fudge, he performed the spell that would allow Fudge to either come into the office or peek his head out for a floo call.

"Hello Dumbledore. I don't have much time, so we'll have to stick to a floo call, but I wanted to tell you the good news myself." Fudeg declared, sticking his head out of the fireplace.

"I know that this might seem a little out of nowhere, but I didn't want you to find out until we were 100% certain that it was going to happen!" He said, drawing out what could have been a 10-word reveal.

"Would you mind telling me whatever good news I am not aware of?" Dumbledore sighed, almost breaking his grandfatherly persona. Sure, he might normally have more patience than a saint, but he was just plain stressed and exhausted.

"I've managed to talk to all 3 governments and the other 2 schools and convince them to reboot the TriWizard Tournament! Not only that, but Hogwarts will be hosting this year!" He babbled excitedly.

"Anyway, I would love to stay and chat, but I've got to go. Bye Dumbledore." And with that, Fudge disappeared in a blaze of green fire.

Dumbledore collapsed in his chair with an audible sigh before slamming his head against the table. Because dammit, the next year was already going to be stressful and chaotic without the tournament. But with it? Well, he's going to have to call in more help to protect the school. Hopefully, his good friend Alastor Moody would agree to help with security. With his level of paranoia, nothing would escape them, and he would be able to nip everything right in the bud.

Right when he was about to call Alastor for help, Minerva walked in.

"Albus, Professor Binns has moved on. We will need a new History of Magic teacher." She informed him.

"Ahh, Minerva, I'll get right on that." He reassured her. As she walked out, the dread built up inside him. He has tried to hire a new professor for History of Magic multiple times, but he was never able to. He wasn't even being picky! Just each time he tried to hire someone for the history position, there were fewer willing candidates than their was for the DADA position... which means there were no candidates because this year, there was only one person interested in the DADA position (other than Quirrell and Snape), and that was a bumbling moron named Lockheart who was egotistical and kept bragging about achomplishments that he had no competence to be able to complete. Still, he hired him since there was no one else.

However, his hiring of an unqualified DADA professor was not going to help him in finding a history professor. Since Binns has been teaching for generations and hasa mind numbing style of doing so, very few, if any, wixen alive, were really interested in the History of Magic. Also, due to the aforementioned reasons, only about 20 living wix have passed their history OWL, and only 10 of them passed their history NEWT. Of course, he would prefer someone that had their NEWT, but he was honestly desperate and would probably hire someone that got a T in all of their OWLs.

Looking down at his list of people who have passed their history NEWT, his eyes caught on one of the names.

He hoped that Remus Lupin would be desperate enough to see his friends' son.

Leaning back, he popped another lemon drop in his mouth, relishing the calming draught that he dosed all of the candies in.

Honestly, whoever said that being headmaster was easy... well, Dumbledore wanted to know what drugs and potions they were on because he seriously needed some of those - the calming draught candies - just weren't cutting it.