My kids were most upset by Hedwig, a totally innocent bystander. Not even a target.
My daughter is reading the book now. She asked me to read to her. We got to the Hedwig scene and she started crying....I had to stop for a while to let her get composed. Then when she thought Hagrid was dead she kept saying Momma no, tell me he’s ok. :) Then we got to Moody. She said, I need a break for a while. She just now asked iif we could start reading again in a little while. I’m dreading the parts about Dobby and Fred. Those are some of her favorite characters. :/
Yeah that one got to be too. Of course in the long run it probably helped Harry, Hedwig is a pretty distinctive beast and presented a problem for secret communications before. And it was useful to help cut Harry off, and certainly established that everybody was fair game in this book. But still, whacking the pretty owl, that was rough.