Unstoppable (OPEN)

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

She hated being in a room if she couldn't see the exit, loud noises, and any possibility that someone might sneak up on her—and that was precisely what made the prospect of running a haunted corn maze in the lead-up to Halloween so appealing to Chrissy. While she had nearly volunteered herself to serve food or drinks, it had dawned on her that she couldn't be jump-scared if she knew precisely how the haunted maze worked, nor would anyone be able to pressure her into going in. Really, she felt as though she'd beaten someone at their own game. She would get to be on the other side of the maze—from a behind-the-scenes standpoint—and would get to learn a few new enchantments. Plus, she would be able to enjoy something for once without being terrified of what lurked around every corner. It was perfect.

It was all an illusion, Chrissy reminded herself, and she had gone over exactly what all of the "tricks" were and where they were located with the adults who had helped to set up the maze multiple times that opening night. As long as she was back at Hogwarts before the skeletons started at midnight, like some sort of twisted version of that one No-Maj fairy tale, she knew that she would be alright.

Just to be on the safe side, she planned to keep her wand illuminated whenever possible, though most of what she had to do was make sure that nobody got lost or did anything that they weren't supposed to be doing in there. If they needed someone to escort them out, then she and the other student volunteers were available to do that.

From what Chrissy understood, it probably wouldn't get as busy until it got later into the evening. Four o'clock was still fairly early, so she was anticipating more younger children and their families, maybe, and not really the crowd that would have been interested in a scare. Regardless, she stood at the ready near the maze's entrance, her name tag on display.

OOC: OPEN!

[Deleted]

'Cause I feel like I can do anything when
My head is spinning and my feet off the ground
When I can't stop dancing like no one's around

Halloween had always been an exciting time of the year, and this year wasn't any different. The coming together of so many intelligent minds created what many students at Hogwarts deemed a must-attend attraction—Zombie Island. Usually, Peyton would have volunteered for this type of thing, always loving the thrill of helping out and making something fun for people. However, this year, she didn't. Maybe it was a weird change of heart, or perhaps she wanted to experience it for herself instead of working it.

She wandered around, taking in everything. Everything had been beautifully done, and though the sun had yet to set, things were already looking frightening. Peyton, herself, had never been one for frights. Though, she did enjoy the celebration of it all. A night filled with terrors, even if All Hallow's Eve was never supposed to be celebrated as such.

Her eyes wandered over everyone and everything in the light of four o'clock, families with little children, even some other Hogwart's students and professors. She took notice of a maze nearby, and a young girl was standing at the mouth of it. She drew closer to the young girl, a smile on her face. "Are you the guard of the maze?" she questioned, her tone an awkward shade of joking. She didn't even know the girl, and here she was, trying to joke with her.

@chrissy

MADE BY VEL OF GS

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

"Are you the guard of the maze?"

Chrissy looked over at the blonde girl who had asked her the question and cracked a small smile, realizing that the girl wasn't asking it to suggest that she was abusing her authority by standing there or anything like that. "Um, I guess?" she replied back to her, giving her a shrug. Chrissy recognized the girl as one of the school prefects, but she hadn't thought about it like that. Her job wasn't really to "guard" the maze, in her mind; that sounded a little harsh. She was just there to make sure that it ran smoothly and that there wouldn't be any problems. If there were, she wasn't really equipped to handle them; she would have to get one of the adults to handle anything that might go seriously wrong, not that she wanted to jinx it.

Shifting her weight slightly between her feet, Chrissy looked to the entrance of the maze, and then she looked back at the girl. "Do you want to go in?" she asked her. "This is the scary side, and then the one over there is just the normal one."

@peytonbainbridge

[Deleted]

'Cause I feel like I can do anything when
My head is spinning and my feet off the ground
When I can't stop dancing like no one's around

Even though Peyton had believed she had failed at making a joke, she watched as a small smile appeared on the other girl's face. She shrugged as she said that she guessed. Well, that obviously a failure in her book, and maybe a little awkward. The girl didn't look offended, but she didn't know that. She could have been and showed a smile to hide the annoyance of Peyton's presence. She wanted to run away with her tail between her legs at that moment but refrained.

She watched as the girl shifted on her feet, eyes wandering to the mouth of the maze before returning to Peyton. 'Do you want to go in? This is the scary side, and then the one over there is just the normal one.' Peyton's lips formed an o-shape, but she didn't speak nor make a sound before shaking her head. "Oh...no. I'm not a fan of scary...or mazes...You just looked kinda bored," she said with an awkward laugh. She brushed another strand of blonde hair back, fixing her ponytail of remaining hair before rubbing at the nape of her neck.

"I'm Peyton," she said quickly and almost awkwardly as she pulled her hand forward, getting slightly tangled in her own blonde locks, before holding it out for the girl to shake. "I don't think we've met before..." she breathed out.

@chrissy

MADE BY VEL OF GS

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

The blonde girl shook her head when asked if she wanted to enter the maze. "Oh… no. I'm not a fan of scary," she explained, "or mazes… You just looked kinda bored." Even though the other girl might have thought that Chrissy would judge her for not being a fan of mazes, since she was helping to operate one, that wasn't the case at all. Chrissy wasn't a fan of scary things or mazes, either, and it made her feel slightly better that this girl whom she didn't know was willing to admit that to her.

"I'm Peyton," the girl said, and it dawned on Chrissy that she was one of the seventh-year Hufflepuff triplets. "I don't think we've met before…" Being two years below them and in a completely different House, it wasn't as though she had ever had a reason to approach them. Peyton held her hand out for Chrissy to shake, which Chrissy did despite finding it a little bit formal.

"I'm Chrissy," Chrissy introduced herself, smiling a little. it was strange to encounter someone who was more nervous about something like that than she was. "Don't worry," she assured her. "I, uh, don't actually like mazes or scary stuff, either."

@peytonbainbridge

[Deleted]

'Cause I feel like I can do anything when
My head is spinning and my feet off the ground
When I can't stop dancing like no one's around

The girl didn't look as if she was judging her, at least not from the facial expression that Peyton was witnessing. That was good, at least, a good sign indeed. However, Chrissy didn't speak until Peyton's entire rant was over, moving from denying that she wanted access to introducing herself. This prompted the brunette girl to speak, introducing herself back as Chrissy, smiling at Peyton. In turn, Peyton returned the smile of pleasantry as she spoke, "Nice to meet you, Chrissy."

The girl returned to Peyton's previous statement about not being a fan of mazes nor frights. She assured her that she shouldn't worry, revealing that she didn't like them either. She smiled, "Oh!" she started, letting out a little laugh, "I wouldn't have thought that...seeing you are working the scary maze..." The blonde swallowed her laughter, "Though, I guess you don't actually go inside the maze...unless someone wants out, right? So you really don't experience the scariness within..." She was rambling again.

@chrissy

MADE BY VEL OF GS

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

Peyton told her that it was nice to meet her, and Chrissy nodded. It was nice to meet her, too, but it was sort of out of the usual for her for people to mean that with any real sincerity when they met her. It was the sort of thing that she had gotten used to hearing MACUSA workers say to her—people who would only exist in her life because it was their job.

It was almost funny to her, though, that Peyton found it interesting that even she—not being interested at all in scary things—happened to be working the maze. "Though, I guess you don't actually go inside the maze… unless someone wants out, right?" she considered. "So you really don't experience the scariness within…"

"Yeah, um, I know everything that's in there and what it's supposed to do," Chrissy explained to the older girl. For the sake of not ruining the scary elements of it, which she supposed some people would have considered to be "fun" somehow, she couldn't actually divulge what was in the maze. "In case there are any issues or anything like that," she shrugged slightly, "but I, um… I'm not gonna be offended if you don't wanna go in. It's, uh, not like we get in trouble if we don't have however many people go in…"

@peytonbainbridge

[Deleted]

'Cause I feel like I can do anything when
My head is spinning and my feet off the ground
When I can't stop dancing like no one's around

The awkwardness that Peyton felt at that moment was evident on her face. Or, maybe it wasn't. She couldn't judge from the other female's facial expression, not that she was a good judge at that anyway. When it came to specific social interactions, things always started bumpy at first. There were only a few times that it wasn't the case, but they were few and far between. Luckily, the female didn't seem bothered by Peyton's awkwardness, introducing herself as Chrissy.

'Don't worry, I, uh, don't actually like mazes or scary stuff either.' The reassurance was enough to make Peyton smile, though the underlying awkwardness was still there. "Oh...I wouldn't have thought that, seeing as you are working the maze...then again, you are standing at the entrance instead of wandering around scaring people within..." God, she was rambling. "Are you here all night? Or do they give you a chance to enjoy the event for yourself?" she questioned.

@chrissy ● sorry for the wait!

MADE BY VEL OF GS

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

Peyton told her that she wouldn't have thought that she wasn't as inclined towards the scarier side of Halloween, since she was working the maze there. Chrissy wasn't completely sure that she believed her and guessed that maybe the older girl was just trying to be nice, but Peyton also pointed out that she was standing outside of the maze and not working within it to try to scare people as a part of the actual attraction. Chrissy had heard of things like that in the No-Maj world, where businesses hired actors around Halloween for haunted houses who were responsible for doing most of the scaring. Some of them, she'd heard, were even permitted to touch the visitors as they went through, presumably to scare them that much more. That sounded to Chrissy like a recipe for disaster if she had ever heard one, and at least the maze—even at its worst—wasn't that.

"Most of it is just enchantments and things like that," Chrissy advised Peyton. That wasn't really giving away any spoilers to say that much about it, she felt. "Nothing in there will actually hurt you," she added with a little smile. She imagined that it would be scary to go into it without knowing how it all worked, though, because it had been intimidating to her initially, too.

"Are you here all night?" Peyton asked her. "Or do they give you a chance to enjoy the event for yourself?"

Chrissy shook her head. "I'm not here all night." That would make for a really long night, and she didn't really want to stick around into the later hours if she didn't have to. Just the thought of going all the way until midnight and standing there as she was in that moment tired her out a little. "Oh, yeah. They have us volunteering in shifts," she explained, and she was pretty certain that that was true of all of the different activities with which the students were involved. "I tried to sign up for as many of the early ones as I could, but, like, I didn't sign up for every single day, either…" That would take away a lot of her free time, and she didn't want to stress herself out like that.

@peytonbainbridge

[Deleted]

'Cause I feel like I can do anything when
My head is spinning and my feet off the ground
When I can't stop dancing like no one's around

'Most of it is just enchantments and things like that. Nothing in there will actually hurt you,' Peyton wasn't all that surprised to hear that, though it didn't mean she would change her mind on the matter. The young witch wasn't one for scares and fear; she'd leave that to the people that enjoyed it. "But there are people inside that scare you? I swore I saw it on the sign-up sheet unless I'm losing my mind," she said with a laugh. Not that it mattered, she was not going inside alone. And she doubted that she would if someone offered to join her and hold her hand.

Her thought process and words changed to questioning the young girl on her evening plans. The girl was quick to say she wasn't there all night, which she was glad for. Everyone should get to experience this night, even if they were like her and barely did any of the scary attractions. She nodded her head, remembering seeing the mention of shifts when people were to sign up. She had taken one look at the sign-up list and shook her head; she usually was the type to volunteer but not for an event like this. She wanted to come, tell people she stuck around, see what she could, and get out just as quickly before the fights started.

She still felt the need to apologize, even though no one had come over wanting to enter the maze since she came over. "Oh, that's good, I'm glad that you'll be able to enjoy the event, even if it's for a little bit," she said with a smile on her face. "I...probably should let you get back to your job; I hope I didn't hold you up," she said, though she knew that she hadn't.

@chrissy ● end maybe?

MADE BY VEL OF GS

[Deleted]

October 15, 2025

"But there are people inside that scare you? I swore I saw it on the sign-up sheet," Peyton said, "unless I'm losing my mind."

"There are people inside," Chrissy nodded, "but it's one of those things where they're, like, not allowed to touch anybody." The fear factor was there, in other words, but most of the concerns that came with the possibility that someone might end up actually attacked or something were minimal. There were too many things that could have gone wrong, Chrissy knew, if the students volunteering inside were allowed to touch the guests as they walked through the maze. She knew that that took the fun out of it for some people who felt that even that made it too tame, but it made it better that way, Chrissy felt.

As their conversation moved from just the maze to the event as a whole, the older blonde expressed that she was glad that Chrissy could enjoy things beyond just standing around where she was presently stationed. Nevertheless, she apologized for having kept her for so long, saying that she probably needed to let her get back to her job. "I hope I didn't hold you up," she told her.

"It's okay," Chrissy shrugged. She was happy that someone had come over just to make conversation with her, really. "I don't mind." She wasn't being paid to stand there, either, so that also changed the way she saw her volunteering obligations. "Let me know if you want recommendations or anything," she added. "I was watching while some of the stuff was being set up."

@peytonbainbridge
OOC: I think we can call this done, unless you wanna do one more?