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Harry Potter fans have managed to force a new multimillion-pound power cable between the UK and Ireland to be relocated as they complained it would impact the "memorial" dedicated to Dobby the House Elf.
In the film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1, the beloved character was buried on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and in real life fans would visit the location to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby”.
The £430m Greenlink interconnector, which links the National Grid to Ireland with a 125-mile cable, was meant to pass through the site of Dobby's memorial.
A memorial for Dobby, a fictional house elf from the Harry Potter fantasy novels and films, at Freshwater West beach on November 6, 2022 in Castlemartin, United Kingdom. Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Fans found out about the plans after project manager Simon Ludlam highlighted this in an interview with the BBC, as he told the Energy Revolution podcast, "we got hundreds of calls, I mean, hundreds of calls," when it aired.
He revealed he didn't know who Dobby was, and so was pretty confused by the influx of calls, and so a colleague informed him, “Apparently we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave”.
“I said: ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’ I said: ‘He’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?’”
According to Ludlam, his colleague replied, “No it’s very, very serious."
As a result of all the complaints, the company got planner to find an alternative route in order to avoid the grave.
"A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy.”
However, the new route meant that “we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave”.
More specifically, near the new underground cable were archaeological trenches which "contained the rim of an inverted pottery vessel whose fabric suggests a Bronze Age collared urn circa 1700-1500BC, typically associated with human burial" as per Pembrokeshire council planning documents.
Previously, The National Trust asked Harry Potter fans to stop leaving socks at the memorial.
"The Trust is asking visitors to only take photos when visiting the memorial to help protect the wider landscape. Items like socks, trinkets, and paint chips from painted pebbles could enter the marine environment and food chain and put wildlife at risk," Jonathan Hughes, National Trust Cymru's assistant director of operations for South Wales said in 2022.
There has been plenty of pushback on social media to the news, with many urging Potter fans upset at the original plans to 'grow up'.
Another wrote: "I refuse to believe Potter had this much power in 2026."
One more said: "listen harry potter was my childhood i’m sure there are still people out there who think of me everytime they see something related to it BUT at some point you need to grow up and differentiate between real life and fiction like this is embarrassing."
"GROW UP," another wrote.
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