A £430 million power cable linking the United Kingdom and Ireland had to be rerouted after Harry Potter fans objected to its planned path across the fictional grave of Dobby, the house-elf who died in Harry's arms in the final novel of the series.
The Greenlink interconnector, which has been operational since early 2024, connects the UK National Grid to Ireland's electricity network. Its original underground route would have cut through Freshwater West beach in Wales, where the death scene was filmed and where a modest memorial marks the character's resting place. A sign reads "Here lies Dobby, a free elf."
Fan pressure changes engineering plans
Project manager Simon Ludlam revealed the episode on the Energy Revolution podcast this week. When the route was announced on BBC Wales in 2019, his office was flooded with calls. Ludlam, now a managing partner at Etchea Energy, said he had no idea who Dobby was or why people were upset about the death of an imaginary being who, in the book, dies in Cornwall.
"The whole thing is fictitious," Ludlam recalled telling a colleague. The colleague replied that it was "very, very serious." Despite the fictional nature of the grave, the outcry was impossible to ignore. The cable was diverted away from the beach and dunes.
"We didn't disturb the beach or the dunes or Dobby's grave in any way," Greenlink chief executive James O'Reilly told the New York Times.
Real archaeology nearby
The rerouted cables now run close to actual Bronze Age remains, including urns associated with human burial, The Guardian reported. The irony was not lost on observers: a fictional grave received protection that real archaeological sites routinely do not.
The memorial has drawn regular pilgrimages since the film's release. Fans leave socks, painted stones and other trinkets, a practice the National Trust has previously discouraged because the items pose a risk to marine life. Socks became a symbol of freedom in the franchise after Harry used one to trick Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby from servitude.
The interconnector represents a major piece of energy infrastructure, capable of transmitting enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes. Its completion marks a significant step in cross-border energy cooperation between the two nations, even if its final alignment was shaped by the devotion of readers to a house-elf's imaginary resting place.
Based on reporting by Global News.