Well, he hesitated. What he felt was unlike anything he'd ever known before—something between fear and guilt, though neither word quite did justice to the sensation curling in his gut. It wasn't guilt exactly, but rather a sickly blend of dread and the odd awareness that something unseen was staring straight into his soul. His throat tightened. His palms sweated. His eyes watered, and his knees quivered as though the air itself had turned against him.
He stood there at the highest stand of the basketball court, the very place Dax had sat hours earlier. That same Dax—the "weird, pathetic nerd" everyone mocked. The same Dax who had dared to knock Malfoy's food from his hand in front of half the school.
