"Quirrell... so it was him."
"You know him?" Hordan asked.
"Yes. He was three years ahead of me, in the same house. Very clever, and already well known when he was at school," Murphy said.
In fact, Quirrell had become a professor at Hogwarts before Murphy had even left school. But he taught Muggle Studies, which Murphy had stopped taking in his third year, so they had barely crossed paths.
Come to think of it, 1991 was only a little over a year away. Harry Potter would be starting school then.
Poor Quirrell. He didn't have long to live.
Speaking of time, Christmas was coming around again.
This Christmas, Puffskeins suddenly became the most popular gifts at the research institute.
Within just a few days, almost every researcher at the institute had a pet Puffskein.
Murphy also received Puffskeins in various colors from more than a dozen female researchers. He had to buy a special glass terrarium fitted with an Undetectable Extension Charm to house them, and asked Laura Kruger to help look after them.
This seemed to annoy his assistant, who said things like, "I'm your work assistant, not your personal assistant." In the end, she reluctantly took on the job only after Murphy gave her a raise.
Meanwhile, with wizards joining the Chip Research Group, progress had been rapid, and the fivefold photolithography process was essentially working.
Before New Year's Day, they managed to produce sample chips on a 0.3-micron process using fivefold photolithography, which kept Murphy delighted for several days.
However, the enormous photolithography machine required for the process was still being built, and the more advanced instruction set and circuit designs were not yet complete, so the money would have to keep burning.
At the same time, another problem surfaced.
"You're saying the photoresist is