So this is a bit of a challenge to myself - writing an alternative plot to series 5 as it happens. This means I have NO IDEA where the series, or this story, will go, but I'm going to try to keep as much in as I can. Some characters may be completely different, though! Here's episode one.

It does rely a bit on you having seen the episode (I didn't want to repeat myself) and it's got less dialogue in it than an actual episode would require, but whatever.

TOTALLY FULL OF SPOILERS FOR 5x01

Renfield was counting quietly to himself, trying to reach two million before his young playmate got bored and wandered off, when he heard a noise that seemed out of place. A voice, perhaps, along the corridor. Prowling out to see what was happening, he noticed that a window had been forced open and closed it firmly, and the realisation sent shivers shooting down his spine. He rushed to the stash of weapons and potions, grabbed some pigweed and a net, then picked up a chain for good measure and raced along the corridor.

He didn't remember, later, what he cried as he single-handedly subdued the hooded figure – no doubt a slayer threat - and he didn't have much memory of telling the Count, though he was sure his Master had been incredibly proud and grateful. What he did remember, however, was the sickening lurch in his stomach as he realised that the net and chain lay empty on the floor.

At last, everything became clear. Master Vlad was back.

With hindsight, Vlad was glad he'd decided to run through his newly-learned process once more for practice before attempting anything that would truly require the protective charm he'd scrawled on the blackboard. Renfield had doused him in pigweed, of all things, and he had no idea what effect that would have had on his plans.

Then, of course, he'd been reunited with his family and all hope of getting things done quietly before they could distract him had been lost. They'd been mildly unimpressed by his demonstration of his meditation technique and reacted predictably enough to his vegetarianism, which he suspected had mortally offended Renfield, so soon enough he'd deemed it wisest to retreat to his room.

He knew what they thought of his new lifestyle, his journey across the world to become 'a dirty unwashed hippy' as his father had told him when he set out, but they could never understand. This pilgrimage, of sorts, and the new diet, they were only the tip of a vast iceberg. It would take so much more than this to cleanse himself of what he'd done, to detoxify his spirit. Perhaps, he had been warned, it could never be done. But he had to try to make amends.

Now that he was home, he wasn't sure that coming back just yet had been a good idea after all. What if he wasn't ready? What if he strayed down that dark path again, or simply failed to stay on the right course? Perhaps he should return to the masters, or to Talitha. There had to be more he could learn, there had to be a surer way...

Well, there was no way he'd be able to get back before dawn, so he supposed he'd just have to bunk down in his old room for the day before heading off once more.

Ingrid had been an official member of the Vampire High Council for a few months now, and she was sick and tired of being at the bottom of the pecking order. Tonight, however, all that was going to change. The Head of Education had been caught fiddling his expenses, and now his job was open. She would have to be sure to have her office thoroughly swept and dusted, just in case there were any lingering remnants of its previous occupant there.

"When do I start?" She smirked victoriously at the vampire behind the desk, but her face fell as he led her into the new Head of Education's office and introduced her as the Head of Catering. Suited to her natural abilities, indeed. She was fuming as she took his drinks order, forced pleasant conversation about his ridiculous technology, and continued on her rounds. By the time she'd suffered the indignity of introducing herself as the Head of Catering – a fancy name for what was clearly a tea lady's job – to everyone on the Council, she'd realised a few very important things.

The first was that she was in no way cut out to be a tea lady; the second was that she'd taken so long in swallowing her pride as she made her rounds that it was almost dawn. With those two things in mind, she took off for home without so much as bothering to find the blood cellar.

When she landed back at Garside, however, she allowed herself a tiny smile of grim determination. The third thing she'd realised in her travels was that people would do and say all sorts of things when there was only a lowly tea lady to hear them. That meant information, and information she could use. Ingrid Dracula wouldn't be a tea lady for long.

His father was trying to convince him to stay, even as Vlad started packing his bags. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Renfield hunting around for something; Wolfie, no doubt. At last, his father asked him if he'd show him how to meditate.
"Is that why you've been hanging around?" The Count nodded reluctantly, and Vlad set his bag aside. "Well, why didn't you say that was what you wanted? Of course I'll teach you." Putting off his departure for one night to spend some quality time with his dad couldn't hurt, after all.

As he should have predicted, the Count quickly grew bored of meditating and started quizzing him about his travels instead.
"Where on earth did you get those chopsticks?" Vlad sighed.
"They're not chopsticks. They're Tibetan meditation sticks. They're black and white to represent Yin and Yang. Negative and positive. Darkness and light. Death... and life." He sighed. "Every vampire holds both within himself, and is truly neither. The balance is important." He glanced up from the sticks he was holding to see that his father had actually fallen asleep, still sitting cross-legged on the floor. Well, there was nothing like an appreciative audience... and this was nothing like an appreciative audience.

He gazed absently at the black stick for a while, thoughts wandering to Talitha. She would tell him to stay a little longer, he was sure. Stay until you've finished your business. He supposed she would say that, but all the same it might well be sound advice. If there was one solid thing about Talitha, it was her common sense.

Well, then. He'd leave tomorrow night, and perhaps by then he'd have plucked up the nerve to try it for real.

Ingrid spent the day watching a breather set up her new state-of-the-art computer. She pressed a random button, when he was done, and watched as an error code flashed up. It never hurt to be underestimated, after all. But then, as he offered to help her with her task, he managed to turn it into a bargain; his assistance for a date.

She might have disagreed with her older brother on a great many subjects, but she still remembered what he'd helped her to realise when she'd been playing Ramanga for the fool he was. She didn't need any man, and she certainly didn't need to use herself as a tradeable commodity to do it. The breather creep was promptly kicked out into the harsh light of day - which utterly failed to affect him, much to Ingrid's personal disappointment - and she settled back into the computer chair to do something he'd obviously never considered her doing; consult the manual. Ingrid was a clever girl, and she'd spent a few lessons in the computer lab at school; it didn't take long at all for her to work out the basic functions of the Vampire High Council's new site and worm her way into the new Head of Education's files, which he'd been foolish enough to put online with only the most basic of protections. She only popped downstairs for a drink, and was ambushed by her father, who wanted Vlad to stay a little longer. Well, that wouldn't hurt to arrange.

That night, at the start of business, the aforementioned Council Member found himself faced with an Ingrid wielding blood, money and secrets. For now, she settled for bribing him with the last of her savings – her father would pay her back when this worked out – and leaving him to underestimate her for a little longer. It got her exactly what she wanted – well, what her father wanted, which might in turn bring her the respect and the space that she'd always craved – and her plans were still coming along nicely.

Vlad was on his way across the courtyard, having completely bottled it once more, when the letter dropped from the sky. If he hadn't noticed his own name on it, he would probably have just stepped over it and taken off – he was cutting it perilously close with the approaching dawn as it was – but instead he stopped and picked it up.

Scanning it quickly, he rounded on his dad.
"The Batalaureate? Is this some trick of yours to keep me here?"
"I don't have any influence over the High Council-" his father protested, and Ingrid hastened to join in.
"Don't look at me, I'm just the tea lady." Renfield was spluttering something, but Vlad cut him off.
"I'm still not staying. I'll take some revision books with me and just drop back for the exam-"
"There's something on the back," Ingrid interrupted, though she'd have to have been suspiciously observant to notice it. He turned the paper over.

"A curfew after dark? They know that's total house arrest, right?"
"Looks like you'd better settle in and find yourself somebody to tutor you," his father smirked, but Vlad just pulled a pen from his bag and began scribbling furiously on the blank space at the very end of the letter.
Batalaureate approved. Curfew overruled by order of Grand High Vampire Vladimir Dracula IV.

"Looks like you all forgot who's in charge around here. I have a veto on all new laws, especially something as restrictive as this." He tossed the letter into the air for the wind to catch – he had no idea how that worked, but it seemed to be reliable enough – and turned to his family. "You're right, though, a tutor might be handy. I have one in mind, as it happens."

"Mistress Ingrid? I can't find Wolfie anywhere, and we've been playing hide-and-seek for ages. Have you seen him?" Ingrid rolled her eyes.
"I'll tell you, if you move that old cabinet for me. Just over there will do." Renfield had to struggle and strain to move what was, in truth, a fairly sizeable wardrobe, across her chambers - but at last he stood triumphant, panting, and waiting for his reward. She shrugged. "Wolfie's been at school camp for the last week. He'll be back tomorrow."

Renfield didn't look convinced, so she marched him down to the little boy's room and pointed at an old, moulting mound of fabric on the bed.
"Look. He wouldn't leave Pup behind if he wasn't coming back soon." Honestly, she was surprised he'd left the toy at all, but then the egos of even very small boys were fragile at the best of times and might not survive taking such a large cuddly toy on a school trip. Renfield's face lit up, though, and she was able to shoo him away and return to her new quarters with a satisfied smile. Vlad's decision to stay despite revoking the curfew had worked out very nicely for her. Now she just had to plan her next move.

Vlad locked the classroom door this time before running through his routine, checking that he'd remembered every step correctly. When he was confident that he'd got it, he retrieved the item he'd stolen from Erin's old room earlier that day. She'd tried to keep it from him, but now, with his newfound talent for meditation and the contents of the little urn he held in his hands, he could begin to move on from his mistakes. He couldn't afford to back out now; he had to pass this test, and he couldn't do that with only his own brain working in his favour. This would give him the edge he needed to succeed.

Carefully, he redrew the protection spells on the board one last time, then set out what he needed in a circle. From now on, he had to be so focused that he wouldn't notice an enemy breaking the door down, never mind one of his family members unlocking it; he hoped they wouldn't, because that could cause his entire plan to fall apart.

Unstopping the urn, he poured the contents carefully into a single pile about a foot in front of his crossed legs before taking up his sticks – one for death, one for life, for both were a vampire's birthright and both they were denied in truth – and began to chant, sacred words of power that he had learnt from Davos Ikeous at his seat in the Himalayas, where a vampire with the right skills and ambitions could learn much more than simply how to set his mind at ease. At last, as he reached the end of his mantra, he shifted gracefully onto his knees, bowed down all the way to the floor, and carefully blew away the ashes he'd so carefully spilled earlier.

He closed his eyes as the wind of his artificial breath shifted the fine dust away from him; this was the final part of the rite, the one that meant he only had one go at this; he'd never be able to gather the ashes back together if he'd failed, and he couldn't afford to fail. But there was silence in the room, and his heart sank. Was that it, then? Had he ruined everything in his haste? Was all hope lost?

For a moment longer, Vlad stayed exactly where he was, eyes tight shut as he'd been taught, to protect them from the dust. Then he felt an icy hand tangle into his hair and grip firmly, jerking his head backwards.