When I get my computer up and running again, this WILL become a full story.

Baddrick was the first official use of the fighting style Walter had been teaching him. Thanks to the fact Harry wasn't stingy in spending gold if the cost was worth the price tag, Walter had been able to get his hands on some extremely rare metal that he made into wires as thin as a human hair and strong enough that it could literally cut tanks in half.

He had seen Walter do it, and had been impressed. So had Integra, because now he had no excuse for why any vampires or ghouls he came across were still intact once he got to them.

That wasn't to say he didn't have several custom made weapons of the more... traditional sort. In his newly made belt was a series of knives, since he wasn't cleared to carry a gun just yet (his aim was always off for some reason) and across his back was a sword he had found in the Potter family vault of which there were three, not counting the trust vault he originally used. One was for money, one for books and one for artifacts.

He found the sword in the artifacts one, and had Alucard examine it, since he was the closest thing to an expert on medieval weapons.

Alucard had deemed it sufficient for killing minor vampires and ghouls, but not for anything like fighting something above that.

"I still don't get why you asked Master to teach you how to use a sword. Aren't guns better?"

"Spoken like a gun nut. The simple fact of the matter is that the need-to-want ratio is skewed against guns almost every time."

"Need to want ratio?"

"We're currently in a battle with ghouls. Now the 'need' is weapon. The want is the 'type' of weapon. You 'need' a weapon to kill them with more efficiency, but the gun is automatically labeled as a 'want'. For example, once the gun is empty you need bullets, otherwise it becomes just another thing to weigh you down. However a sword remains useful up until the point it's either broken or shattered. I could possibly transfigure something into a crude sword pretty quickly, so the 'need' for a weapon is easy to maintain. A gun I would have to locate, reload, and then discard once it's out of ammunition. Therefor in a long term scenario a sword is still far more useful than a gun, and thus the ratio of 'need-to-want' is favored towards blades than guns."

"Not to mention there's more fun to be had seeing your enemies cut down in front of you up close and personal," Alucard added.

"That too. Guns are just too easy," said Harry. Alucard smirked.

With the gunfire temporarily halted, Harry tilted his head.

"Do you guys here that?"

"Hear what?" asked Seras.

"There's someone up there, and I don't think it's a vampire."

Alucard paused. Vampires, even low level ones, instinctively learned to walk with a specific gait. Almost silent, in fact.

Whoever was walking upstairs had clunky boots and was heavy, probably two-hundred and fifty pounds or more. They had an assured gait, and if he listened carefully he could hear the calm heart beat of a hunter.

Whoever this was, he was more than Seras could handle. And he had doubts Harry could either.

"You two, get outside now. Make sure none of these things managed to escape while we were taking out the trash," said Alucard.

They knew nothing had escaped, Harry's ward prevented it. But whoever this was had Alucard's attention which never signified anything good.

Harry dragged Seras downstairs and out the door. With her vampire senses she could keep an eye on some of the action through the window and out of the way of the danger. At least some of it.

She had barely cleared the door when something slammed against it and shut the door firmly. From the look of the blade, there was no way Harry was getting out without blasting it down. Something also covered the windows, and when Seras went to break it she felt something painful shoot through her. Whatever this was, it wasn't something that liked vampires.

Realizing he was trapped by the magic he could roughly feel out, Harry was annoyed. So instead of wasting time trying to escape, he did something productive. He went looking for Alucard.

What he found was a very enthusiastic Master Vampire and someone he only knew from word of mouth and the files he had gotten from Walter of all the more dangerous players he might encounter.

At the top of the list was the man before him trying to kill Alucard... Father Alexander Anderson of the Iscariots.

Seeing Alucard have his head cut off was surprising, but he had doubts it would actually kill him. Anderson turned, and when he saw Harry he had this expression on his face.

It was one that clearly said he was a zealot that would not hear reason, excuses, or even logic. This was a man so dedicated to his 'path' that he could care less about slaughtering the innocent if it meant appeasing whatever higher power he worshiped...he would even kill newborns if given the order.

When faced with such a person, there were only two options. Fight or flee.

With the building warded by some magic he didn't recognize and Seras unable to even touch it (he had heard her pained yelp), there was really only one conceivable option.

Either he took this bastard down, or he fought like hell until Alucard got off his ass and came back.

Anderson seemed to recognize that Harry would not beg for his life, but would greet death with open arms and a smile on his face. He would go down fighting or not at all.

He lifted his swords, and the sneer on his face spoke volumes.

"Bring it on, asshole," said Harry, not bothering to charge. He needed to gauge how fast Anderson was. Right now he was putting the crazed priest on the same level as Alucard, and that was being generous.

Anderson, loathe as he was to admit it, was having fun. This wizard brat was better than he had expected for someone clearly trained in that heretic school from Scotland...especially considering who lead the place.

There was no way Dumbledore would allow swordsmanship classes taught at that school...which meant the kid had to have picked it up from Alucard. And since he had only recently heard the Hellsing group had taken in a stray wizard, the kid was either abnormally fast at picking things up or was a natural.

Considering how he used those wires, he was betting it was the former. The only other person that good at using wires the way he did was the Angel of Death, also employed by the Hellsing group.

But that wasn't what bothered him.

No, that exclusively lay in the fact that the kid read as both 'wizard' and 'vampire' to his senses. The fact his eyes kept shifting from red to green didn't help, or the fact his speed alternated between human range or that of an inexperienced vampire.

The fighting had driven them both to the upper floor of the building, right below where Alucard's body was. For the famous 'kept' vampire, he was rather disappointing. The kid put up a better fight.

Finally Anderson was able to slip past the boy's defenses and left a nasty gash on his left arm. Considering he was right handed, that wouldn't disable him, but he wouldn't be able to fight with both hands on his sword anymore. Not if he didn't want to bleed out.

Which was why he was taken entirely off guard when instead the kid chose path number three.

He deliberately blasted a hole in the floor to drop down a level and preferably get a chance to bandage the wound. Definitely smarter than most of the people Anderson trained at that age. Most of them would have stuck it out, trying to get a cheap shot in or try to flee.

This kid knew enough to get out of the fighting area long enough to possibly fix or at least partially mend the wound so he could keep up his fight. He didn't bother to try and hide his move either, showing he also recognized the effort would be pointless and take precious seconds away.

And frankly Anderson was enjoying himself too much to simply drop down and chase after him directly. He'd take the long way down, if only because he was impressed.

If the boy survived this he would have to get the kid's name, because opponents like him were rare.

And opponents like this kid were worth keeping around, at least until you had orders to the contrary. Otherwise life would be boring.

"FUCK!" swore Harry to himself. He ripped open another bag of blood, but the wound didn't heal as quickly as it should have. So he had to go another route.

He pulled out his new wand and started hissing healing spells.

It closed, but it would be sore for days until whatever Anderson had on his blades wore off. What the hell were those things? They felt like they had some sort of static shock to them, and they hurt like a bitch when he finally got cut by it!

Hearing the heavy boots stalk down the stairs (evidently Anderson had given him a temporary reprieve) he knew he didn't have much time.

So naturally he was surprised when he saw something red slowly flowing on the floor...and spelling out words.

"Now? Now you choose to act you idiot?!" he hissed. Evidently Alucard was tired of playing dead, or had gotten bored.

Oh he was pissed. That vampire could have helped five minutes ago when Harry's estimation of his healing abilities said he would be up. Apparently he would rather see him struggle.

Harry broke down the door, scanned it for Alucard's body...then to the shock of Anderson he stomped right up to it and kicked him right between the legs as hard as he possibly could.

"Either you get off your fanged ass right now or I'm lacing every single wine bottle they have with holy water you bastard!"

Anderson was definitely caught off guard when he heard the familiar chuckle of Alucard...of course that was twinged with a minor bit of pain from the kick to the chones Harry had given him.

Seeing Alucard finally come back into play, Harry did the first thing that came to mind.

He cursed the vampire out for taking so damn long. Anderson was stuck between annoyed and very amused.

However seeing as how even the inexperienced teen had gotten a few licks in, and he doubted Alucard would let him 'kill' him so easily a second time, Anderson decided to do something else.

"You there, laddie. What's yer name?"

The teen blinked, as if in disbelief he had to ask.

"Harry James Potter."

Anderson couldn't help his reaction. Now that he was looking for it, he could see the infamous scar. He had been so caught up in fighting the kid that he hadn't even noticed it...scars were common enough in real fighters after all.

"The Boy-Who-Lived. I'm starting to think those idiot heretics weren't just over blowing your 'ability' like they normally do," laughed Anderson, covering his eyes.

And when Integra showed up, Anderson smirked. He dispelled the barrier, cackling as he vanished into thin air.

With the barrier down and the adrenaline wearing off, Harry did the only sensible thing one could do after getting a nasty wound like the one on his shoulder.

He passed out from blood loss.

Harry woke up in the Hellsing estate, on the hospital bed feeling like crap.

"What the hell did that asshole have on his blades?" he had to ask.

"He blessed them. Which begs the question of why your wound didn't heal after three bags of blood and a full three days of being treated," said Integra.

"You're not a vampire. We've checked for that and the spell came back negative. You also don't have the same weaknesses as one," said the healer.

"To be fair, we don't know what you are. You feed like a vampire, but you don't have any of the usual weaknesses. And none of the spells that were used turned up anything."

"He's a hybrid."

Integra turned to see Alucard leaning against the wall.

"A what."

"A hybrid. Half vampire, half wizard. I'm guessing he got it from his mother, because there's no records of a vampire in the Potter family. It also explains why I can't sense him at all. Hybrids are notorious for being impossible for vampires to track, though they're so rare that finding one these days is next to impossible," said Alucard flatly.

"A half-vampire? How does that even work?" asked the healer.

"Simple. He had to have been born that way, otherwise he wouldn't be able to age or eat normal foods. And I can only assume his father would have thrown his wife out if she had been turned. Wizards are notorious for hating anything that isn't fully human. He gets all the perks of being a vampire, with very few of the weaknesses. In this case he's partially immune to blessed blades, but they'll heal as slowly as a human would."

"...So I can feed on other blood types without getting sick?" asked Harry.

The humans turned to look at him oddly.

"What?"

"Well I only got into the practice of feeding on blood so I wouldn't become anemic with my habit of cutting myself, but I stuck to my own blood type to avoid getting poisoned. Even I know it's a bad idea to mix blood types," said Harry.

Alucard started laughing, hard. That was what he was worried about? Mixing blood types?

"Why did you get into such a deplorable habit in the first place? Was it to slake the bloodlust?" asked Integra.

"Control."

"Excuse me?"

"It was for control. Until recently I had no control whatsoever over my own life. I had no say in where I lived, where I went, what people I could associate with, or even what I could learn. So when I realized I had control over one thing...one small thing that literally meant life or death if handled incorrectly, the power it gave me became addicting. The taste for blood didn't really kick in until I hit thirteen, when puberty struck," clarified Harry.

He had control over where he cut, how deep it was and whether or when he could do it. And with so little of that control in his life, he had clung to it like a life line, knowing that with the slightest press of his knife he could end it all... at least until his vampire side kicked in apparently.

Integra clearly didn't get it...but Alucard did. He understood all too well the loss of control.

"Perhaps I could put it into terms you can understand. Imagine you're part of the royal family back in old times. You're a female of the royal line, and placed into a neat little box that you can't ever escape from except in the event of your death, the destruction of your kingdom, or if you dared, an attempt to try and break out of that box. So when you have control over one thing, one tiny insignificant thing that no one can take from you, you use that as a lifeline," said Alucard.

Understanding came to her face. She showed no pity, because if there was one thing he hated next to fame, it was pity.

"To be fair, I haven't engaged in the practice once since I came here," offered Harry. He didn't need to. He only did it to attain some measure of control, which he never got while under Dumbledore's thumb. Here, he was free to roam around, learn whatever he wanted, and greeted like a rookie hunter by the men who guarded the place. Even Integra treated him like a younger Walter.

Not once did they treat him like a child throwing a tantrum when he expressed his own views. They didn't coddle him, they acted as though he were an equal member of the team. And if their training was harsh, well, he had all but asked for it.

Because of Dumbledore, he was so used to pain that he barely even registered it as more than an annoyance.

So yes, he had yet to indulge in that particular habit, especially since Integra didn't care if he feed on blood so long as he was discreet or just joined Alucard.