The celebration lasted the entire night.
It began in the Gryffindor common room with the specific quality of a space that had been waiting for exactly this occasion --- the common room at full capacity, the noise genuine and unmanaged, someone having produced a quantity of Butterbeer through means that McGonagall later described in her report as unclear. It continued through the evening and into the late hours with the graduated quality of a celebration that had moved through its phases: the initial noise, the gradual settling into smaller groups, the conversations that only happened in the particular context of three in the morning when the event that had gathered everyone was still present but the urgency had passed.
He sat at one point with Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Dean on the floor near the fire in the way that was only comfortable for people who had grown up in houses without enough chairs. Harry still had the Snitch --- was turning it over in his fingers with the unconscious quality of someone who had caught something and was still understanding what it meant. Ginny was telling a story about the final from her position in the stands that was more dramatic than his own recollection and significantly better told. Neville was eating the last of someone's Chocolate Frogs with the focused appreciation of someone who had been nervous all match and was now working through the stress by other means.
Hermione was beside him with her shoulder against his, talking to Parvati and Lavender in the specific way she talked to them now --- more direct and less careful than it had been in September, the manner of someone who had found that people she had slightly underestimated had turned out to be worth the full investment.
He took two photographs. One of Harry with the Snitch. One of Hermione laughing at something Parvati had said, which caught something in her expression that the posed version would not have had.
Around two in the morning he sat with just Harry, the others having migrated to other conversations, and Harry said: 'Sirius came.'
'I saw him,' Ron said. 'I'm having breakfast with him tomorrow.'
Harry looked at him. 'He told me about the business idea.' A pause. 'He was excited. The actual Sirius kind of excited, not the performing it kind.'
'What did he say about it?' Ron said.
'He said it was the first idea he'd heard that sounded like something he'd actually want to do,' Harry said. 'He said the bookshop part was almost insultingly good as a cover because he knew Lupin genuinely would run a bookshop.' A pause. 'He also said it was your idea and he wanted to know how you'd thought of it.'
'I thought about what he actually is,' Ron said. 'Rather than what the situation usually asks people to be.'
Harry was quiet for a moment. 'That's what you do. With people.'
'It's useful,' Ron said.
'It's more than that,' Harry said, with the directness he occasionally produced at two in the morning. 'You see people. Actually. And then you figure out what they need rather than what's convenient.'
Ron absorbed this.
'You do it too,' he said. 'You've been doing it all year.'
'I've been learning it,' Harry said. 'From watching you.'
The fire had burned down to embers. The common room had thinned. Somewhere near the window, Seamus and Dean had fallen asleep in chairs.
'Good year,' Harry said.
'Yes,' Ron said.
'Next one's going to be harder,' Harry said. It was said without weight, just acknowledgement, the tone of someone who knew what was coming and had decided to look at it directly.
'It is,' Ron said. 'We'll be ready.'
Harry looked at the Snitch in his fingers.
'Yeah,' he said. 'I think we will.'
They sat in the embers of the celebration until the fire went out, and then went to bed, and it was the right ending for the right kind of night.