ewe-canon and epilogue-canon

Last night, frayach posted several questions about canon!Harry. The questions are really interesting and the answers even more so. Do go add your 2 cents. It's very much a refocusing on Canon which often gets lost in all the porn around here. LOL.

Anyway - in my response I mentioned how in my head I have two canons: ewe-canon and epilogue-canon, for which I was promptly and good-naturedly laughed at. :D

But it's true. I have this on/off switch in my head for when I write fic. There are two canons: one where the epilogue happened and I MUST satisfy all that was entailed in those 19 years later pages to be content to write and one where canon ends with Harry being 17.

I'm not talking about some official definition of canon, I KNOW that everything contained in the books is 'canon,' but I need to know...

When you pick up a pen (or sit at your keyboard) to start a fic - does your mind contain the epilogue no matter what you are writing about? If you are writing something school-age or just after school or anything that does not include the epilogue, do you consider your work AU? Does the epilogue sit in the back of your mind poking at you saying 'what you are writing cannot exists because I exist?'

For me, it does not. The epilogue just... disappears when I write something that is ewe. Canon becomes the ewe-canon that I truly believe in and I hold to JKRs work religiously, and try to respect what she has given us without any guilt of those last few pages being ignored. My creativity would be stifled if I believed that there was only One True Canon while writing. I find it suffocating to think about.