Almost 24 hours since we set-up the deal and all contact has stopped. If I don't have a reply by tomorrow morning, I doubt anything will happen

. Sucks because $7 is a lot of money for a student.
He has not been online in almost 20 hours, so i would not be panicking yet. However if the delivery has been delayed by that much i think he should do one of these options:
1. Return your BTC to you (of course with tx fee)
2. Do the paypal conversion for no fee at all, and return 2$ to you.
I'll leave him some feedback if he does not answer here within 24 hours.