I tend to try and use betas because I know they generally improve my stories - just I really didn't like a comment about how mathematicians/scientists didn't think a particular way.... which given that I have a maths degree I found rather annoying and inaccurate (given how many people I've known who would identify as one of these I don't think there is an overall different way of thinking when applied to life).

It is the very end of the book and afterward bit, but I think it would be hard to stop. I know I couldn't!

For me it really depends, some deaths I have no trouble ignoring by writing earlier or AUs, others throw me out of the fandom hard. It partly depends how much it works emotionally in the canon (ie most of the HP deaths seem far too formulaic and not dealt with well...)