Harry and Ron's actions directly changed the course of the Fourth Task.
After gathering fruits of all five colors, the two immediately sped upward. With no need to search, a few thousand meters was not a particularly long distance to fly, and they soon overtook several contestants ahead of them.
Without question, the champions chosen by the Goblet of Fire were the elites of their respective schools, and every one of them was clever. The moment they saw Harry and Ron flying up together, they understood what had happened.
And so, the situation changed.
Meng, who was in second place, immediately turned back to find Lei Kaiming.
Although she was still missing one color of fruit-her luck really was terrible-she had quite a few fruits in hand. If she and Lei Kaiming could fill each other's gaps, they might be able to finish right away.
Next was Julianne Sirtute, who hesitated briefly before turning around to find Krum. She had relatively few gemstones. Although she now had fruits of four different colors, she had only one gemstone left and did not dare try again.
Krum, whom she had overtaken, had started fifth but had eighteen gemstones, so he ought to have some to spare. Or perhaps he had extra fruit?
Lei Kaiming had not caught on when he saw Harry and Ron suddenly heading up together, but when he saw Meng and Julianne, who were ahead of him, turn around and head down, he immediately understood too.
He had already used all but two of his gemstones, but his bad luck from the third task had continued into this round, and he still had only three different colors.
Well, he had started with thirteen gemstones and wasted two at Big Leaf, leaving eleven, of which he had already used nine.