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The Doctor is there when River Song becomes Dr. River Song.
There are proud parents (he feels guilty about hers, again), and there are hats that even the Doctor is hard pressed not to find a little silly, and there are several speeches about tradition, and history, and bright futures. There's a commencement speaker that has--despite there no longer being any Europe to vision--won Eurovision and an honorary doctorate. Twenty minutes later, there is River.
River of the elegant dresses and the halucigenic lipstick, though all of that is still settling into place. As she marches across the stage, not quite all saunter (not yet) but certainly holding strong at a healthy 80% saunter/nonsaunter ratio, the Doctor is amused to note that even River cannot make that mane of hair look intentional under the really, immensely stupid hat.
She receives her piece of very fancy paper and takes her seat again, and it isn't until the reception afterwards that the Doctor sees her again. She's chatting with classmates about some finer point of differentiating very old things from slightly less old (but still fairly dusty) things when she catches sight of him. She takes her time, finishing up her conversation with a few emphatic gestures of her punch glass before coming over, because she is River and she has other things than him to concern herself with, particularly today.
"Hello, sweetie," she says, and he sees that she has her journal with her, under the diploma. She must have known he would come.
"Dr. Song," he says, smiling. "You are wearing an immensely stupid hat."
"Says the man in elbow patches approximately 18 centuries and two planets over from their last hurrah." She sips her punch, and rolls her eyes at his wounded spluttering. "So, did you come here for any reason other than to mock my hat, Doctor?" Her eyes are making suggestions that he elects to ignore.
"I have a gift for you." He pulls it out of his jacket pocket, and hands it to River--a trowel, wrapped in blue ribbon to match its handle. It provokes a laugh.
"Centuries in the field, and still at the end of the day an archaeologist needs her trowel. How did you know?" She's not far-enough along in her timeline to know, yet (one day in her future, she'll tell him--he's always assumed that archeologists would have invented artifact-finding nanobots by then, but there you are).
"Spoilers," he says, tapping the blue book that she has in her hand. She raises an eyebrow at him (and with it his heart rate--hearts rate? He's never considered the grammatical implications of the good doctor's eyebrow arch), but the response seems to satisfy.
"So, any more gifts hiding in your clothes, Doctor?" She gestures at his jacket with her trowel, and he turns a somewhat unflattering shade of red. He wants to kiss her (he always wants to kiss her) and also, maybe, run away from her (which only happens maybe half the time), but he knows he's too early in her timeline for the former--if they were there yet, she would have kissed him by now.
"Not, ah, as of yet, no. Just the trowel." His clothes feel vaguely too tight. Her expression has turned from the playful eyebrow raise to a look of real concern that he might fall over. It wouldn't do to kill a man at the graduation reception. There would be paperwork.
The Doctor is saved by a gaggle of bright-eyed students coming towards him and River. They have the look of undergraduates looking to congratulate their teacher--determined and also a little bit scared.
"You have other visitors," he says, nodding in their general direction. "And, ah, I need to go. Very important... thing happening in the TARDIS. World saving, timey wimey explodey bits." River does not believe him, but she does shake his hand when he offers it.
"Congratulations, Dr. Song. You're going to be brilliant."
"Doctor," She leans in and her breath on his ear makes him want to squirm, except that--as he has to remind himself--he is too old for squirming and she is wearing a hat that is decidedly uncool. "Thank you."
She releases the Doctor in time for him to begin to beat a leggy retreat (he only knocks over one flower arrangement, which is a decent record for him). He's gone before the students reach River.
The Doctor looks back over his shoulder before he snaps his fingers, and there she is with the students, smiling and chatting, hair golden in the sun. The light catches on the spade.
River's in the middle of a conversation with one of the students when she hears the noise. "Parking break!" she says, mostly to herself. The students look startled, and she catches herself. "I'm sorry--you were saying?" The conversation carries on.