Warner Bros.
Dobby the Elf from the Harry Potter series
The Harry Potter series has attracted a massive legion of incredibly devoted fans who’ve developed a sincere emotional connection to the books and movies. The characters in them may not exist in real life, but that didn’t stop some people from rallying around Dobby the elf after learning an underwater cable was slated to disrupt his fictional grave on a beach in the United Kingdom.
It’s been more than 25 years since the first book in the Harry Potter series was unleashed on an unsuspecting world en route to spawning one of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time.
It may have been firmly targeted at children, but it is still propped up by the so-called “Harry Potter Adults” who fell in love with the books and movies as kids and are still rabid fans who derive a sizable chunk of their personality from the Hogwarts house they’d think they’d belong to and the Patronus they’d have if they inhabited the magical world the series takes place in.
That world features some fairly problematic beliefs and traditions, none of which spring to mind faster than the house-elves that are essentially slaves to the wizards they refer to as masters and are sworn to serve and protect for eternity (they can only be freed if they are given a piece of clothing by whoever they’re beholden to).
That species includes Dobby, who was serving the Malfoys when he made his first appearance in Chamber of Secrets and ultimately died as a free elf while coming to the aid of Harry Potter and his friends during a magic battle in Deathly Hollows.
Fans have spent years flocking to the place where he was buried in the movie franchise, and they forced engineers to overhaul their plans for an underwater cable that was originally going to run through that resting site.
Plans for an undersea cable were overhauled due to Harry Potter fans who objected to it running through the grave of Dobby the elf
Dobby was buried at the fictitious Shell Cottage, and the scene where he was laid to rest was filmed at Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
There is obviously nothing buried inside that grave when you consider Dobby was a CGI creature who was represented by a tennis ball on the set during the filming of the movies. However, that has not prevented Harry Potter fans from flocking there to pay tribute (much to the chagrin of officials who’ve begged them to stop leaving socks at the memorial for him over environmental concerns).
According to The Guardian, that section of Freshwater West was also supposed to be the site of the Greenlink Interconnector, an approximately 120-mile undersea electrical cable responsible for, well, connecting the grids of Ireland and the United Kingdom.
However, Simon Ludlam, the project manager who oversaw the laying of the cable, revealed those plans were derailed after he appeared on the BBC to discuss them, saying his company received “hundreds of calls” from angry Potterheads before he had the following conversation with a coworker:
“Apparently we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave.”
“Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby? He’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?”
“No, it’s very, very serious.”
The cable was ultimately rerouted to avoid the desecration of the nonexistent grave, and the memorial remains there to this day.