Rat Fink had the best advice for authors and their readers: "If I gotta explain, ya wouldn't understand." But I'll try anyway, because I'm stupid. :-)
Why did I skip over the Whole Grand Plot Shebang of Book Seven? Because that really wasn't the focus of this little story -- all of the get-Voldemort business was pushed to the background, and I really wasn't interested in recapitulating it when it wasn't the point of the story.
The point was simply this: What if a teenaged Severus Snape had had, if only for a little while, a happy life with loving father, mother, siblings and even a girlfriend? What happens when that life is snatched from him? And what happens when he gets it back, after a fashion?
To that end, the story was 90 flashback, with intermittent bits showing how Severus' associates in the present were working to heal him. For dramatic purposes, the story really ended when Severus finally came to his senses and found his Dad smiling down at him. Everything else that followed was just tying up loose ends; out of necessity, the Nortons and the Halvorsons could not play major roles in the War on Voldie (being that they are helpless Muggles and all; only in Severus' coma-driven hallucinations does John Norton wield a shotgun against the Dark Lord), and since they play key roles in my story, it made sense to skip over twenty-odd extra chapters in favor of cutting straight to scenes where the Ns and Hs figured prominently.
Like I've said before, this is about the most atypical HP fanfic imaginable. There's no sex, no real suspense (we know from the beginning that Severus' idyllic days with the Nortons are destined to be cut short, and that he will be Obliviated), no songfic-inspired angsty-wangstyness. It's just about a boy -- and the people who come to be his loved ones.
UPDATE: Chapter 23 has been updated to tie up a few loose ends, most of them involving Julie. There may be another bit of writing coming along later -- I thought it'd be interesting to get Whitehound's take on Julie and Severus. Watch your mailbox for further announcements...