I've often observed to my roomie that JKR is very hard on small animals. It has always troubled me, but I've ignored it in the pleasure of the books. Another thing that troubles me is the way she derides Divination. She has made it a laughingstock, which, as an amateur astrologer, I find a bit disturbing. I mean, would she like it if I wrote a book in which I made witchcraft sound silly? This is particularly irritating when the OED definition of "Arithmancy" (apparently a much more respectable Hogwarts class, since Hermione likes it) is "divination by the use of numbers". Numerology, in other words.
I vote that (a) Hogwarts gets an Animal Use Committee to guarantee the safety of all small animals and to sensitize the students to the rights of these animals to live without being tortured, killed, or turned into anything else, and (b) we get a new, much more respectable Divination teacher, one which will not be held in general contempt.