Harry Potter fans have successfully pressured the developer of a £430m undersea power cable linking Britain and Ireland to reroute it, after learning it would pass through the fictional "grave" of the house-elf Dobby on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire. Dobby was buried at the Welsh beach in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and fans regularly leave stones there reading "Here Lies Dobby", despite requests from landowner the National Trust to stop, as the site is ecologically sensitive. The episode highlights the strength of Harry Potter fandom and its unusual influence over a major infrastructure project.

Project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast that the Greenlink interconnector, a 125-mile (200km) cable running to County Wexford, was originally due to cross the site, and that his firm received "hundreds of calls" after he unwittingly revealed the route's location during a BBC interview. Ludlam said he initially had no idea who Dobby was, but planners were subsequently brought in to find an alternative path. The new route now passes close to genuine Bronze Age human burial remains, including funerary urns, instead of the fictional grave.