Ok, so this is after Shadow Kissed but no Strigoi changed Dimitri. Yay! Oh, and no one knows about Rose and Dimitri...well except Adrian and Victor but they already knew so...yeah lol. This is Rose's gaduation and how I think it should go. If people want then I could turn this in to a story about Rose's life after she graduates with Lissa, Dimitri, Christian, Adrian and everbody else. But only if people review. Oh, and I will be updating all my other stories tonight. Please review!

Rose's POV

I was in my room with Lissa getting ready for graduation. Lissa had about a thousand dresses laid on my bed and she had already chosen the dress she was wearing and we were now attempting to choose my dress so Lissa could do my hair and makeup and then I would get her ready. Lissa held up two dresses that were our favorites and we were trying to chose between them. The other thousand and something reject dresses were splayed across my bed. What I would like to know is why Lissa has a bajillion dresses in my size. Where did she get all these?

One of our two favorite dresses was black and short. It was form fitting and smooth at the top and flared at the bottom and went to about my knees. It had a black rose over the left breast and the skirt was poofy and had gold glitter on it. It looked amazing on me. (Links to pictures of dresses on profile) The other was purplish brown and it was made of a leathery material. It tight at the top then flared out very slightly at the skirt, the skirt was roushced and right in the middle of my breasts there was a silver jewel. The dress was slightly shorter than the black one and not as puffy.

"Um..." I said " I think we should go with the black one. Black is more me." I said.

"Yeah, I totally agree. And black goes better with your skin tone." Lissa said. Oh my god, what is she, a professional stylist? I love Lissa but she knows a feakish amount of random stuff about clothes and style. Well, she's my best friend so I just roll with it.

I just rolled my eyes and nodded and then Lissa handed me my dress and grabbed her dress. It was hot pink and it had one shoulder, there were silver jewels all across the dress and it went down to about mid-thigh. It looked great on her and it made her look like she actually had boobs. We were both gonna look super hot today. I was wearing black stilletto's with my dress and Lissa was wearing silver stiletto heals with hers. I was wearing my hair down and we were curling it and Lissa's was wearing hers in a fancy half-up half-down due. I would have worn mine like Lissa's, but Dimitri likes my hair down. Lissa was still trying to convince me to wear my hair up, and I couldn't just say Dimitri liked it better down because Lissa didn't know about Dimitri and I.

Lissa and I got dressed then Lissa shoved me in to a seat in front of my desk, where she had placed a mirror. On the desk there were a thousand different kinds of makeups, lotions and hair accesories along with Lissa's hair curler and straightener. It was insane. One person should not own this many beauty products.

Lissa began to put on my makeup and after about an hour of sitting in the damn chair my butt was numb, my feet were asleep and Lissa told me she was done and that I should open my eyes and look in the mirror. So I opened my eyes and prepared to see what Lissa had done to my face and hair. I was completely shocked by the girl I saw in the mirror in front of me.

I barely recognized myself. My hair was perfectly curled and it flowed down to my mid-back. I had on mascara, eyeline, blush and a lot of other makeup and I looked absolutely gorgeus. I looked like I was twenty five! In a good way, I didn't look old, but I did look mature. I had brown eye shadow and dark red lipstick and the colors worked perfectly with my complexion.

"Did I do okay?" Lissa asked me.

"Oh my god, Lissa! You did amazing. I...I...Lissa you should be like a freakin professional stylist! Your amazing!" I practically shouted at her. I smiled and jumped up to hug her. She hugged me back, but then she scolded me saying I was going to ruin our dresses.

Then I shoved Lissa in to the chair and did her makeup. It only took me twenty minutes. I don't know how Lissa can take an hour to put makeup on me and I put the same amount of makeup on her and it only takes twenty minutes.

We both looked amazingly hot. At St. Vladimir's our graduation robes were black not hideus yellow or dark red like human school's. We put on our robes and caps and we actually looked awesome in them. Later for the Promise Mark ceremony I would have to wear my guardian black and white but for this graduation ceremony we did it like the humans did.

Lissa told me that Christian, Eddie, Mia (who was back for graduation), and Adrian (who was just coming with us because he's,well...Adrian) were coming to meet us at her room , so we stayed and waited in her room for about ten minutes before we heard a knock on the door and voices outside in the hall. Why didn't Christian just open the door? I was pretty sure Lissa had given him a key so they could...ew..I don't even want to think about that.

Mia wore an orange dress that went to about her knees and looked great on her (Again the links for all the girls graduation dresses are on my profile). And Christian and Eddie wore tuxedo's, while Adrian wore normal clothes seeing as he wouldn't be graduating today.

After greeting each other (and Christian's eyes bugging out of his head when he saw Lissa) we headed down to the auditorium where the graduation ceremony would be taking place. When we got to the auditorium there were Guardian's lining the walls and they were all wearing black and white. Some of them were a little beat up because in the trials that the Dhampir novices had taken yesterday they had taken some pretty hard hits from of course I had gotten the highest scores out of everyone in my graduating class. Hell, I probably got the highest scores in the history of this damn school. The room it's self was set up somewhat like a movie theater with the seats in rows going up. Only instead of a movie screen there was a big stage in front. On the stage there was a podium set up and a microphone in the center of the stage.

I glanced around the room looking for, you guessed it, Dimitri. I found him standing next to Alberta right near a door along the left wall near the stage. I pulled Lissa's hand that I was holding and led the whole group to sit on the left side of the auditrium in the front row so we were right next to where Dimitri and Alberta were standing. I saw him studying me as we sat down, and though he had his Guardian mask on I could still see the love in his eyes as his eyes searched over me, though I'm sure no one else could. We had about fifteen or twenty minutes before the ceromony would start.

"Hey Comrade!" I said and then smiled at him.

"Hello Rose." He said in return.

"What no 'how are you Rose' or maybe an 'Oh my god Rose someone should make you queen of the universe'...well that last one doesn't really make sense but still...someone should make me queen of something." I said.

Dimitri just rolled his eyes in response to that and muttered something in Russian. Lissa laughed and I said "What?" and then I remembered Lissa spoke Russian.

"What did he say about me?" I asked her.

"Nothing her just said 'Rose what the heck are we going to do with you?'." Lissa told me.

"Hey Dimitri, I have a translator! Lissa speaks Russian!" I told him.

Dimitri looked like he was going to respond but then he was interupted by a group of people rushing in through the door he was next to. They were all speaking in Russian and I didn't understand a word of it. There was three girls one looked a little younger than me and the other looked Dimitri's age, maybe a little older. There was also a middle aged woman holding a baby girl, a very old woman and a young boy maybe ten years old.

Then I suddenly put it together. They were all hugging Dimitri. And speaking Russian. And all of them had brown hair and brown eyes, except the old lady who had grey was Dimitri's family!

After they frantically greeted each other they turned around and looked at the auditrium and I said "Dimitri, why didn't you tell em you invited your family?"

"Because I didn't invite them. I had no idea they were coming." He responded. He looked happy, very happy. Dimitri had always told me how much he loved his family and now I could tell that he really did. The heard us talking and then their eyes all rested on me.

"Who is this?" The youngest girl asked. I searched through my brain trying to remember their names. And then I remember Dimitri had told me he had a sixteen year old sister named Vikitoria. So, the girl who had just spoken was Viktoria. The two older girls wered names Sonya and Karolina though I didn't really know which was which because they were both close to the same age and the two girls didn't really look alike but I just didn't know who was who yet, and Dimitri had told me the baby belonged to Sonya. What was the babies name? Um...Zoya. Yeah. Zoya. Then Paul was the little boy and Olena was his mother, the middle agaed woman. And Dimitri's grandmother's name was...Yeba? Yesa? Yeva? Yeah that was it...Yeva.

"Um, this is my student Rosemarie Hathaway." Dimtri said. And then I sighed and responded "Dimitri you know I hate being called Rosemaire. It's Rose. My name is Rose Hathaway."

They all nodded and greeted me then Kirova called everyone to attention and the Belikov's sat in the seats in the row behind us. One by one she called the Moroi's name. Jesse Zeklos, Ralph Zarcovsky, Camille Conta...all names I recognized. And then she finally got the name of someone I actually liked. Well...kinda. "Christian Ozera." She called out.

"Woohoo! Go Fireboy!" I shouted too loudly as the crowd clapped and cheered and Christian just smirked at me as he got up and grabbed his diploma and then he walked across the stage and came back down and sat next to Lissa, who hugged him then held his hand.

The next name was also someone I didn't hate. "Mia Rinaldi." The crowd cheered and Mia got up and she held her head up high as she walked up and got her diploma then she came back down and sat on the other side of Christian.

"Vasilissa Dragomir." Kirova said. Me and my entourage screamed and cheered louder than the rest of the room put together, which was saying something because everone cheered really loud for her. Then she came back down off the stage and I ran up and hugged her and then Christian kissed her on the cheek and we all sat back down in our seats.

Now the good part was coming. The Dhampirs names would now be called. We were getting our guarding assignments. Alberta walked up to the stage, because being the head guardian she was the one who got to call our names and give us our diploma's and then after that the valadictorians would give their speeches and stuff and then we would go to the Promise mark ceremony and then there would be a big dance for all the novices and Moroi students to celebrate our graduation.

The first Dhampir called was Eddie and we all cheered for him and he got assigned as one of Christian's guardians. Awesome, now I'll get to see Eddie all the time because Lissa and Chritstian will be together all the time and I assume I'm guarding Lissa.

She read off a few more names and then they called me. It was kind of surreal. Graduating. I'd lived in this school my whole life and now in the blink of an eye it was over. They handed me my diploma and then I barely registered it when they told me I was guarding Lissa. I had actaully been expecting this so it didn't surprise me at all. So I just smiled and went down and hugged Lissa, Mia and Eddie and I even hugged Christian and Adrian. Then I turned around and threw my arms around Dimitri, which he was not expecting. But he hugged me back anyway then he told me he wwas proud of me which made me smile big time and I went back to sit down. our hug had been innocent and friendly and barely anyone had noticed anyway.

Then they called out the rest of the names and them they got the crowd to quiet down so they could announce the valadictorians that were giving speeches. It was a tradition at St. Vlad's that they didn't tell the people who were giving speeches beforehand so people just had to make up speeches on the spot. The valadictorian got called up and gave a bullshit speech about how 'this is only the begining' and 'our futures were up to us' and all that crap.

"Ok. Now we are going to do something we have never done before. The novice with the best fighting scores in the graduating class will give us a speech. And that is... Hathaway." What? I had no idea what to say! I thought they were only doing the people with the best grades and stuff. I didn't have a freaking speech redy! Well, I guess that was kind of the point...

I walked up to the stage, trying not to show my nervousness.

"Well, I really don't know what to say here...So I guess I'll start from the begining. I got dropped off here at age four. We all started here at age four I guess. We didn't know how to read, we didn't know how to right. And we really didn't know who we were. All we knew was our parents had dropped us off at a really big school and that we were going to stay here. But slowly...we figured it out. Who we are. We learned to read and write and, for novices, we learned to fight.

"We learned who our friends are. I remember when I met Lissa in kindergarten. Our teacher was telling us to write our names and I thought it was just plain cruel to male five year olds spell Vasilissa Dragomir and Rosemarie Hataway so I threw a book at her and called her a facist bastard. Ever since then Lissa and I became inseperable" The whole crowd laughed at this story.

"And, I've never known a place to call home other than St. Vladimirs. Even when Lissa and I were on the run...we were never at home. Because here is our home and I know that now. I don't know what I would do without this school. Here we all learned what friendship was, what pain and loss are, what love is. And for most of us, we don't really know what to do once we leave these big iron gates. That's like strange and foreign to us."

"But each and every one of us has it in us to do something great. Well everyone of us except Jesse Zeklos and Ralf Zarcovsky" I said and everybody laughed while I could see Jesse and Ralf glaring at me from their seats.

"And, each one of the instructors and teachers hear have taught us something. Like...Alberta taught me how to fight, Stan taught me that if you make smart-ass comments you will get kicked out of class" Everybody laughed at that. " We've had some of our biggest moments here. Our first kiss, our first time ounching someone, " Everybody laughed at that. "We found our best friends here, we've lost friends and family in battles...well that was mostly recently, we've faught our first fight and found our first loves and well...everything we do outside these gates can somehow be traced back to something we learned at this school. Right here. We need to keep these memories with us as we go through life and cherish them. Cause you only go through highschool once."

"We have lived here our entire lives and the outside world is completely different from the classes we take here. There's no schedule someone give you, you don't go from class to class, you can't go tell a Guardian or the headmistress every time something goes wrong. We're really on our own out there. But the teachers and Guardian's here have taught us everything we need to know. We've learned all the skills that we need to live very succesful lifes full of adventures and fun and friendship and laughter and everything we know, we've learned in this academy."

"But I have to say the person at 's that has taught me the most...is my very own mentor, Dimitri Belikov." I smiled at Dimitri then continued " He taught me self control. And I was here for fifteen years and not a single teacher could get me to use self control. But Dimitri did. He taught me to to fight physically and to fight for what i believe in, to fight for what's right. And he believed in me when no one else would, and I want to thank you for that Dimitri." I looked over at him..asking him a question with my eyes. We had agreed we could tell everyone on graduation. Well, it was graduation..and now was as good a time as any.

Dimitri nodded. Okay. It's go time. I motioned him to come up on to the stage and he did. "And the most important thing he's taught me...was how to love someone." I said and then I wrapped my arms around him and he tilted my head up and kissed me. Right in front of everybody. I could feel Lissa's shock and anger through the bond and I knew she was gonna bitch me out later. Conversations broke out through the crowd and no one quite seemed to know what to about us.

"I'm eighteen now. It's legal there's nothing you can do bitches!"

"Rose, language." Dimitri said. I just pouted at him and turned back to face the audience and I grabbed Dimitri's hand. I noticed my mother in the audience and she looked like she wanted to kill somebody...probably Dimitri and I. Alberta didn't look surprised at all, which surprised me. And when she caught my eye she gave me a small smile. Dimitri's family was smiling at us. Good. At least they don't hate me. Eddie, Christian and Mia looked surprised and Adrian looked unconcerned because he already knew about us anyway.

Well, now our secrets out.

Sorry for the cruddy ending. If you want this to be a story instead of a one-shot then please review! Love it? Hate it? Did I do ok? Tell me!

love xoxo

EVA