Lost toy attached to balloons floats around neighbourhood for days, inspiring kindness

Colwood, B.C. -

Before Dorian Weaver discovered how magical his community could be, the nine-year-old was simply playing with his Harry Potter Lego.

“I was doing like a wizard spell,” Dorian smiles, before showing how he’d tied two of the mini-figurines to the end of a couple of half-inflated balloons, hoping they would fly around the living room.

“Balloonus!”

Alas, the lofty spell failed. The Harry Potter characters fell to the floor.

“They were like bobbing,” Dorian said, before revealing that when his back was turned, his spell sent Potter and his pal skyward.

“They must have bobbed out the window.”

Although Dorian didn’t realize that until hours later, when his mom Cristina Weaver noticed something unusual beyond their backyard.

“I guess the wind picked them up and blew them into the tree behind our house,” Cristina says, pointing out their deck door towards their backyard.

“Oh no!” Dorian recalls exclaiming after seeing them stuck so high up, before saying, “Oh yes,” and scrambling up the tree to try to liberate his Lego.

“I was like, ‘No you’re not,’” Cristina recalls saying as Dorian climbed within a few feet of the top of the tree. “Come down!”

While Dorian did what he was told and came down — by the next morning — so had the toys.

“I was like, ‘Oh no!’” Cristina remembers noticing the balloons had disappeared from the treetop. “They’re gone.”

Her boy’s beloved toys were no where to be seen. So Cristina posted a plea on social media for help.

“The amount of people that responded was really quite heart-warming,” Cristina smiles.

The comments ranged from a bucket truck operator offering to look for the lofty Lego in the nearby trees, to a woman gifting Dorian a complete set of Harry Potter Lego characters that her son had outgrown.

“It was awesome,” Dorian smiles.

While Dorian and Cristina couldn’t have been more grateful — three days later — they couldn’t have been more surprised to hear how far the balloons had traveled. Somebody who lived blocks away – across a park, elementary school, municipal hall, and busy streets – from where the balloons were last seen had found them in their yard, and the figurines were still attached.

“Yeah!” Dorian remembers saying when he was reunited with his toys.

“It was so nice,” Cristina smiles. “It’s that old adage of it takes a village.”

While Dorian’s wizarding spell may have made his toys disappear, there’s no doubt that it was simple acts of kindness from countless strangers that made their reappearance feel so magical.