Where the night prayer actually sits

Once the morning is anchored, the night prayer has an obvious place, and it is the tradition's own placement rather than a compromise.

The sound reports put the descent in the last third of the night, and the Qur'an calls the night prayer nafila, additional, which is a word doing legal work that a scholar can explain better than we can. Both of those put qiyam at the end of a night that has already happened, not at the front of one that never will.

In practice that means the same fixed rising time, moved earlier on the nights you intend to pray, and then not moved back on the nights you do not. What it does not mean is going to bed at midnight, getting up at three, and staying up.