Wow. Thanks very much for this response. It's quite helpful. Since I'm starting at the end of HBP and going AU, there are a lot of things that never will have happened in my timeline (even though I do not in any way plan to take this timeline up to the defeat of Voldemort.)I'm even more glad there are a lot of things about DH I will never have to explain, because they have no place in my version of events.

As to where you found this-- did the links not come through on loose canon, or did the post get skipped by in all the other traffic on the board this past week?

I'm going to go ahead and post this in its entirety on the board, as some people did express a preference for that. But I'm very glad to have your response here for later reference.