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Story approach

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Lanodantheon:
The 2 options both function equally well but they lend themselves to different things. The benefit of "You're a Wizard, Harry." Is you get to use the magic as an initiating Event. That is, the MC's life starts in balance and the magic throws his/her life out of balance. THis is a key part of "Classical" Story structure. The benefit of option 2 is that you can start in the midst of things with a character you only have to explain what you need to about.

The Magical School Bligsroman desconstruction project I'm slowly working on favors option 2 for a few very important reasons:

1. Unless you are absolutely certain about your character's origins, option 2 lets you just have the complete character and state what that character is here and now and not have to worry how he/she got there.

2. In my own project, my MC hails from Pennington, NJ. Living on the other side of the country, I can't really do any more research than I already have without actually going there which is an impossibility atm.
Starting my character fully formed, with his exact origins left unsaid until needed is essential to my situation. It also relates to the themes of my story.

3. Most importantly with option 2: You can always go back to the backstory. Option 1 sets the backstory in stone unless the narrator is very unreliable and/or you do lots of retconning. Option 2 lets you have an unreliable narrator until you need to otherwise.

Because of Reasons 1, 2 and 3, my project has to use the Quantum-Leap Brand Swiss Cheese Memory as my MC calls it. It freaks him out. This lets me not have to think of everything about my MC's backstory until I can get to that part of NJ(When he gets his magic, my MC's life gets turned upside down while he is at school).

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