If Cinderella didn’t run out at midnight, there would’ve been DIRE consequences: she would’ve lost her ride home from the ball, as the horse carriage turned BACK into a pumpkin, and the horses, back into white mice, the stagecoach, a lizard, or a gecko, or WHATEVER the HECK it was that the fairy godmother used to “create” the stagecoach…
If Cinderella didn’t run out at midnight, she would’ve exposed herself to the prince, and, who knows, maybe, just maybe, he’d looked down on her, because she’s only, a “servant girl” in her stepmother and stepsisters’ house.
not my cartoon footage…
If Cinderella didn’t run out at midnight, then, she wouldn’t have the exciting hopes of how the Prince will look for her using the glass slipper she’d left behind as a guide.
If Cinderella didn’t run out at midnight, then, the Prince wouldn’t have missed her, how they’d, danced the night away, how that night, was the most wonderful memory she would, ever behold in her mind…
So, even IF Cinderella doesn’t turn back into her poorer, maid self, she would’ve felt compelled, to run out of the palace at the struck of midnight, and, the prince wouldn’t have, “rescued” her from her stepmother and stepsisters’ household.