I once came across a book lover's post on social media about how unexpected it was for them to grieve so much over the deaths of fictional characters; to which someone had replied that it felt even more painful to hear those characters called 'fictional'. I found this oddly comforting - to know that there are fellow creatures who get as invested in the characters formed by the pages of a book, as I do. Literary characters do exist in the collective consciousness of bibliophiles around the world. We know and remember them from each of the different worlds in which we have sojourned through books, just as much as any of the real people we have met at different stages of our lives. It is as Dumbledore says - "Of course it's happening inside your head ... Why should that mean it's not real?" Only in this case, it is not merely a single person's head, it is a collection of ideas and memories that we share with the author as well as thousands of other read...