The Ministry archivist peered from the request form to the slim, silent girl across the desk. Her mouth stretched too wide as if to enunciate for a child. "These books aren't for little girls." Her simpering smile was not returned.

Martha wrote across the back of the form in a smooth, confident script: "My father is Gustav Bessel with the Improper Use of Magic Office. Perhaps you know of him."

The woman rechecked the signature. "Oh, of course! Forgive me." She puttered to the back and returned with a thin, dust-coated copy of Stanton's A Practical Guide to Undetectable Poisons. Martha thanked her, turned on her heel, and walked home, slipping the paper catalog she'd stolen from the trash between the leaves of the book.

The cellar door locked from the inside; no one knew why, but Martha was glad of it. She set one lit candle beside the open book and carried another to the potions cabinet. The finger-mark bruises around her wrists ached.

Hours passed. Nothing worked. The knotgrass was rotted, they were long out of manticore blood; the only poisons she could make would give a person a light headache or took a year to mature. Patience is a virtue, she reminded herself, but virtue was in short supply in the Bessel house. She pressed her fists to her eyes to stop them stinging. Perhaps she could collapse a wall, or arrange an attack by a Dark creature, or...

The front door thudded open above, and heavy feet stalked toward her room. Her father was home from work.

She threw aside the book of poisons and opened the Muggle gun catalog.