Perhaps most famously these days, it is the one thing that Voldemort in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series did not understand and in the end was key in ending him. Indeed, we owe Rowling a great debt for making love such a powerful theme in such a masterful tale, for as said Albus Dumbledore, "Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love." Parents' love, the love between friends, between siblings, and the romantic kind that is what Valentine's Day celebrates. I prefer to acknowledge them all, though, as each is no less crucial than the other and should one be taken away it would leave the other two scarred (even if only slightly depending on the situation).
Not that it cannot leave scarring in other ways on the characters and readers both, for as Cadvan of Lirigon from Alison Croggon's Books of Pellinor says, "To love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong." I wont get into specifics so as to avoid spoilers, but this quote is one of the truest I have ever encountered on the subject; that and one of Terry Brooks, "Love supplies a kind of strength that can withstand even death." Ironic, this quote, in the case of Voldemort seeing as death was what he had bent his soul over backwards trying to avoid but, as the great J.R.R. Tolkien notes, "To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face." and "The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." Why all these quotes? To make the point that love ties Fantasy literature together no less than the use of magic. That is why it is the Final Lesson. Happy Valentine's Day!
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