The Greenlink interconnector, a 125-mile undersea and overland power cable linking County Wexford in Ireland to Pembrokeshire in Wales, had to change course after fans discovered its original path would run straight through the beloved memorial to Dobby the house-elf.
The £430 million (roughly $580 million) project, now fully operational, connects Ireland's electricity grid to the UK's National Grid and can power some 380,000 homes. But before it went live in 2025, the company behind it, Etchea Energy, found itself fielding hundreds of frantic phone calls from fans of the wizarding world, all demanding the same thing. Leave Dobby alone.
The beach at the center of the row is Freshwater West in southwest Wales, where the emotional death scene of Dobby was filmed for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1" back in 2010. Since the movie's release, fans have turned the spot into an unofficial shrine, leaving painted stones inscribed with "Here Lies Dobby" and, controversially, socks, a nod to the moment Harry frees the elf from servitude with a sock in the finale of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."
The National Trust, which owns the land and is Europe's largest conservation charity, agreed in 2022 that the memorial could stay put, though the group has repeatedly asked visitors to stop leaving socks behind, citing the ecological sensitivity of the site.
Harry Potter fans have managed to get part of a £430 million undersea cable project moved.
The planned route ran straight through Dobby's grave on a beach in Wales.
Dobby is fictional.The grave isn't fictional though. Fans built it, and it’s become a real memorial.
So the… pic.twitter.com/nzJ4LiNYjd
— Paul Schleifer (@PaulSchleifer) August 10, 2026
Simon Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, told the podcast "The Energy Revolution" that he had no idea who Dobby even was when the backlash began, the BBC reports. He recalled a colleague warning him about the planned cable route with alarm.
"Apparently we're going to go straight through Dobby's grave," the colleague told him, according to Ludlam.
Ludlam admitted he was baffled. "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?'"
His colleague was having none of it. "No it's very, very serious," Ludlam recalled being told.
It turned out fans had latched onto the issue after Ludlam filmed a segment for the BBC explaining exactly where the interconnector would make landfall at Freshwater West. Once word got out that the cable might cut through the unofficial grave site, the calls started pouring in.
Rather than dismiss the outcry, Etchea Energy went back to the drawing board with its planners and worked out a new route that steered well clear of the fictional resting place. It was not a simple detour either. While rerouting away from Dobby, the project team passed close to something very real: a set of Bronze Age remains, including burial urns.
"So we got back with the planners and discussed exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn't go anymore into Dobby's grave," Ludlam explained. "And a lot of people were very happy about that and, you know, the project's now going and Dobby's happy."
He said the whole episode taught him something about listening to the public, however unusual the complaint. "I think you've got to be flexible, agile and thoughtful. And sometimes, a 10-year-old girl, she's right."
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